I haven’t conferred a Republican Dingbat Award in awhile. Bizarre comments by our friends on the right have become so routine they aren’t worth noting. But every once in awhile a comment is so loony it is hard to resist.
Here is Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) on the House floor this week commenting on health care policy:
…what we’re really getting here is we’re not just getting single-payer care. We’re getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care […]It appeared in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. You can Google it. You can pick up the phone and call Kim Strassel. You can ask her about Soviet-style gulag health care in America, where powerful politicians protect their constituents.
Now the Soviet gulags were a network of prisons and forced labor camps in Stalinist Russia that held anyone who was even suspected of being in opposition to Stalin’s policies and in which an estimated 1.5 million people died.
I have no idea what modest health care reform has in common with Soviet labor camps and Shadegg never explains. So I don’t know what to make of his comment. But even more puzzling is the fact that grown-ups actually vote for this loon.
Tags: John Shadegg
