This attempt to make political hay over the passing of Jack Kemp by Arlen Specter should be enough to curdle your stomach.
Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its healthcare priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.....
"Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn't want me as their candidate," Mr. Specter said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "But as a matter of principle, I'm becoming much more comfortable with the Democrats' approach. And one of the items that I'm working on, Bob, is funding for medical research."
Mr. Specter continued: "If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine."
I'd rank that right up there with John Edwards claiming that electing John Kerry would help Christopher Reeve to walk again, a claim that
Charles Krauthammer rightfully disdained five years ago.
This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Well, you can now add in Arlen "I'll say and do anything to hold onto political office" Specter.
2 comments:
I grew up in Philadelphia. I worked in the news business in Philadelphia for many years before moving. I grew up admiring Arlen Specter. I now find it very hard to admire him any longer. I held on a very long time. So sad.
Medical research saves lives. I don't think there is anything false about that.
Edwards said 'people like' Reeves could be saved, so he wasn't suggesting they would be quick enough to save Reeve. (Actually, it was said a few days after Reeve's death, so your statement that Edwards said voting for Kerry would help Reeve walk again is demonstrably false. In the quote provided by Krauthammer, Edwards gave no timeline and did not suggest any cures would be around the corner. Just that putting up barriers to medical research shouldn't be the governing philosophy.)
Specter's quote does suggest a recently deceased Kemp would be alive if Republicans hadn't abandoned Nixon's 'war on cancer'. His line about research saving/prolonging many lives including his own would have been sufficient.
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