At Least The Terri Schiavo Debacle Is Being Raised In One Campaign

Last year, Howard Dean promised that Terri Schiavo would be an issue in the run-up to the 2006 Mid-Term elections. And why not -- I personally know several conservatives who were outraged by how the GOP involved itself in that private matter merely to satisfy the Extreme Christian Right, so one would think that this issue would be getting a lot of play this year. But it isn't.

Well, that's not entirely true -- it is getting a lot of play in Florida:

Knocked off his stride by a free-wheeling, three-way debate Monday, Republican nominee for governor Charlie Crist remained on the defensive Tuesday as he explained a claim that he had opposed government intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.

Asked point blank by debate moderator Chris Matthews, "Did you speak up at the time against the congressional action," Crist replied: "Yes, I did."

"It made my jaw drop," Michael Schiavo said from his Clearwater home Tuesday. "The man lied through his teeth."

Schiavo fought both the state and federal governments to let him take his wife off life support after she had spent 15 years in a vegetative state. "The man ran from this like the plague. And now he's going to say he spoke up? He did not. He didn't say a word."

On Tuesday, after a Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee, Crist said "there are varying degrees" of speaking up. He said he spoke up in private conversations with his colleagues in the attorney general's office and with friends that government should stay out of the dispute between Terri Schiavo's husband and her family.

I'm no expert as to what "speaking up" means in the political world, but something tells me that Crist's explanation just ain't gonna fly.