Life and death politics
The Schiavo case is just the latest front in a much nastier war
In addition to striking a chord with abortion opponents, the Schiavo case provided conservatives with another example of what they consider the tyranny of the nation's courts, which repeatedly declined to rule in favor of Schiavo's parents. "Schiavo is becoming the symbol for evangelicals and traditional Catholics that this legal system is . . . so broken it can't fix itself," says Land. "The remedy is to implant more backbone in Congress."
Conservative disillusionment with the judiciary helps explain the recent success of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America by former Reagan administration official Mark Levin, which has shot up the New York Times bestseller list despite being largely ignored by the mainstream media. The book blasts the high court for supporting "terrorists' rights" and flag burning. "We are becoming a government run by the judiciary," says Levin. In the Schiavo case, he adds, the court "felt comfortable . . . rolling over the clear intent of Congress."
Social conservatives see the Schiavo case as a possible turning point. While Congress stressed that its intervention in the matter was not precedent setting, leaders on the right considered it a long-overdue first step by Congress to rein in a judiciary they say has been "legislating from the bench" on abortion rights and same-sex marriage. In its last session, the House passed legislation prohibiting federal courts from accepting challenges to the "under God" wording in the Pledge of Allegiance or to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to disregard same-sex marriage licenses granted in other states. The bills died in the Senate, but publicity surrounding the Schiavo case may revive them and will certainly intensify calls for the nomination of a hard-right conservative to fill an expected Supreme Court vacancy and for Senate Republicans to invoke the "nuclear option" to overcome Democratic filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees.
"Values" lobbyists. While some disgruntled court-bashers welcomed last week's federal intervention, developments in Washington came so quickly in the days leading up to it, says Green, that "Congress's action may have surprised social conservatives as much as the rest of the country." Unlike previous campaigns by the religious right, says Christian activist Gary Bauer, "this was not a case where the House switchboard was shut down by the grass roots." Instead, when the House and Senate came to loggerheads over reconciling their two versions of the bill, a small band of "values" lobbyists focused on convincing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that "the base would hold House Republicans accountable if they missed this chance to act," says the Center for a Just Society's Colin Stewart, who was involved in the effort. Ken Connor, the lawyer who represented Jeb Bush in his fight to keep Schiavo alive, says he enlisted national activists in a last-ditch lobbying effort with a simple formula: "Prayer plus principle plus pressure equals progress."
While leaders of the Christian right pushed hard for intervention in the Schiavo case, in-the-pews Christians appeared less convinced. An ABC News poll last week found that just 44 percent of evangelicals supported the bill that kicked the Schiavo case into federal court, while 38 percent of Catholics did. Some conservatives attacked the poll questions as biased, but "at this point," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, "the [Christian right] grass roots doesn't seem to view this as clear-cut a case as the pro-life position."
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