Just when we thought it might be safe to cut Mel Martinez some slack over his pandering-dominated campaigns, doesn’t the rookie senator just go and up the ante again.
Recall that the Florida Republican had tacked hard to the right on gays as Bill McCollum found out in the primary. Then Sami Al-Arian became a blunt political instrument with which to hammer Betty Castor for being “soft” on terrorism. And for good measure, Martinez did his White House master’s bidding by turning on his own people to back the president’s tougher economic-and-visitation restrictions against Cubans.
Now he is among those who couldn’t withstand the self-serving temptation to directly meddle in the agonizing, emotional tinder box that is the Terri Schiavo case. He helped turn her end-of-life tragedy into theater of the absurd as the Senate Health Committee “invited” Terri Schiavo and her husband Michael to come to Washington to “testify.”
Mercifully, the only resultant testimony was the self-evident sort that accurately portrayed Martinez as the ever-expedient, pandering politician that he is.