Mike Huckabee waded into “death panel” territory earlier this week when he talked about the death of Ted Kennedy:
Mike Huckabee addressed the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy and its impact on the health care debate Thursday morning on his radio show “The Huckabee Report.” He began his show by criticizing President Obama and others who have used Sen. Kennedy’s passing as an opportunity to rally support for their health care proposal.
“Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death had barely hit the news before we started hearing calls that Congress must hurry and pass the health care reform bill and do it in his memory,” said Huckabee. “That not only defies good taste, it defies logic. We certainly can and should respect his years of advocacy and work for the things that he truly believed in. But there is no good reason to rush through a giant unread bill that would transform American health care and impact every citizen.”
Then, Huckabee went on to politicize Kennedy’s death:
The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, “The Huckabee Report,” on Thursday that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.
“[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to consider just taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them,” said Huckabee. “Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.”
Here’s the audio:
Of course, there’s nothing in the proposed legislation even closely resembling what Huckabee is talking about, and the scenario that he describes could just as easily play itself out under the status quo that exists today, which Republicans seem compelled to defend for reasons that I personally can’t understand.
In any case, as George Stephanopolos points out, Huckabee’s remarks are likely less about the truth than they are about 2012 politics:
One thing’s for sure: by joining the debate in this time in this way, Huckabee is showing how determined he is not to be outmaneuvered by Sarah Palin in the early 2012 bidding for the GOP’s conservative base
So, it seems that the Huckster and Miss Wasilla will end up competing for the loyalty of the intellectually vapid wing of the GOP.
