Afraid that the AIG executive bonus bailout just may be the demise of the Democratic Party, MSNBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd trivialized the death of Terry Schiavo by suggesting the fight over Schiavo’s life was the demise of the Republican party.

Host Andrea Mitchell, Gene Robinson, and Chuck Todd were discussing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s survival of the AIG scandal on Mitchell’s March 20 show MSNBC Live when Todd inserted this bit of political wisdom:

 “An… Andrea? Really fast? You never know, you never know, when you know, this could turn into a Schiavo moment. And remember how the Terry Schiavo thing ended up being the beginning of the end for the Republican Party and their control. You just never know when one of these stories just catches wildfire in the popul…, in sort of the populist front. Sometimes you can’t stop it no matter which party you are.”

Conventional wisdom may contend that the Republican Party became too conservative for its own good, and that the fight over Schiavo’s life was the quintessential example to prove that point. However, even if the fight over Schiavo’s life was indeed the point at which people turned from the party that had become too conservative, at least the party went down fighting for something it believed in: the value of human life.

The death of 41 year-old Terry Schiavo was a controversy that gripped the nation for weeks because the battle between her family members to end her life peacefully, or keep her on life support was a difficult one to watch.  For Todd to equate the continuing saga over bank bailouts with the life and painful death of a woman is certainly in poor taste.