Just because President Obama set out to fully debunk the “death panel” smear in his speech to Congress last night, it doesn’t mean for a moment that Republicans are actually going to stop playing that card, as Greg Sargent has noticed.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a potential presidential candidate, appeared today on Morning Joe, and admitted that the health care bill does not create death panels — but warned that people should be worried about it happening ten years from now, in order to lower costs:
“Joe, there is nothing int he legislation that directly says that,” Pawlenty admitted. “It’s the indirect concerns that I’m trying to articulate, that I think are at least worth raising.”
Pawlenty need not worry about death panels hurting Minnesota, though. If it ever gets to that point, he could always run for governor again and then nullify them.
Mike Barnicle, describing himself as being in a “benevolent mood this morning,” explicitly gave Pawlenty a chance to back away from this, and Pawlenty stuck to his Deatherist guns — and also called for civility in this discussion.
“Now does the bill say there’s death panels? No. Does the bill say that somebody’s actually going to, you know, say you have to live or die? No,” said Pawlenty. “But the indirect concerns that I’m raising, and others have raised, are not irrational. So we can have an informed, reasonable debate about that without one side or the other just calling each other names.”
