Will the 2012 Candidates Maintain Their Silence About Tea Party Extremists?
If you watched last night’s GOP presidential debate, you were treated to the shocking spectacle of the Tea Party crowd cheering on the death of someone who didn’t have health insurance but required intensive care for six months. Watch the shocking video:
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) explained that letting the uninsured die rather than offer them assistance is “what freedom is all about.”
Protect Your Care, a pro-health care organization, quickly issued a statement and called on the 2012 candidates and the Tea Party groups sponsoring the debate to condemn the actions of the crowd:
Last night we got a disturbing view into the Tea Party’s extreme right-wing position on health care when members of the audience clapped and cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die. Even worse, none of the Republican candidates on stage expressed a word of disapproval as the Tea Party audience literally clapped for blood. This was a spectacle one would have expected back in the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome, not at a presidential debate.
This moment is a test of whether those who aspire to the office of the president of the United States have the leadership abilities to stand up to the extreme Tea Party elements that we saw on sickening display last night. The Republican candidates should condemn the extreme and un-American value of letting people die, as should the Tea Party Express and other Tea Party organizations.
Last night’s incident comes on top of another shocking moment in last week’s GOP presidential debate when the Repubican crowd broke into spontaneous applause at the mere mention of the fact that Texas Governor Rick Perry has presided over the executions of more than 230 people:
Rick Perry’s record number of executions includes the deaths of juveniles, the mentally disabled, and, as is widely alleged, the death of at least one innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham.
In just two days, Texas is set to execute another man, Duane Buck, who was sentenced to death based on the testimony of a discredited, racist psychologist. Others who were sentenced to death in Texas as a result of that psychologist’s testimony received new trials and Buck’s prosecutor has even said he deserves a new trial “untainted by considerations of race.” Perry, however, has refused to comment on the impending execution.
One response
unbelievable.