Let Him Die?
By Josh Dorner on Sep 13, 2011
This material was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe
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:
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.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
At last night’s debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) sounded an alarm about the dangers of the HPV vaccine, but she is using a singular, misleading example to make her case.
Michele Bachmann thinks U.S. immigration laws “worked very, very well” during a past period that included racist laws giving preferential treatment to Europeans over Asians.
Big Oil refuses to invest in energy’s future.
Once the U.S. finds a way around the “First Amendment issue,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) says we’ll see more controls over the Internet.
At a British parliamentary hearing on Muslim radicalization, Rep. Peter King (R-NY)defends the Irish Republican Army’s terrorism.
Michigan GOP lawmaker says public school teachers are “more than greedy.”
A North Carolina lawmaker compared a state ban on same-sex marriage to Nazi Germany’s oppression of its LGBT community.
The program Rick Perry said was a “Ponzi scheme” kept 14 million seniors out of poverty last year.
Sign Here: Tell Congress to Rebuild America
For the past decade, Congress has had no problem spending over $120 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, America’s infrastructure is crumbling and millions of people are out of work.
All the Republican leaders in Congress voted to approve massive amounts of funding to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan without a penny in offsets. But now they are opposing President Obama’s proposal to rebuild America even though it’s fully paid for.
Contact your member today and demand we invest at least as much in our own communities as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Click here to contact your Member of Congress.
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