On last night's The Ed Show, MSNBC's Ed Schultz didn't take too kindly to Virginia Representative Eric Cantor's suggestion to a constituent, whose relative was diagnosed with cancer and who could not get health care, that she should seek out an "existing government program" or a "charitable organization" to, you know... save her life and whatnot. I can understand why Schultz was so angry! Here's Eric Cantor, knowing full well that America has the "best health care in the world," suggesting that health care was somehow rationed or something!
Well, if Schultz didn't care for Cantor sloughing off the concerns of a constituent in that manner, the straw that seems to have broken the camel's back was a call from a Cantor spokeperson, "chiding him for going after the congressman," reports ThinkProgress. This would not stand!
SCHULTZ: I want you to email or call Cantor's office and ask him why he won't go head to head with me on this issue. Why he doesn't have an answer for that woman that would give her coverage, and why he is against the public option that would give her coverage. She obviously now has a pre-existing condition and can't get helped. She is left behind and the Republicans don't have a plan for her, and they're just comfortable with the fact that she...you know...she's either got financial ruin, or she's going to die.
Schultz then played the original exchange between Cantor and fulminated a bit more before reiterating his call-slash-invitation to have Cantor come on The Ed Show for the entire hour to debate the matter and elucidate the Republican health care plan in full:
SCHULTZ: Call Cantor's office or e-mail him and ask him if he'll go head-to-head with me for a full hour on the Ed show. A full hour. I'll give him a full hour! To explain what the Republican plan is to help that woman out, or is she just left to die?
LISTEN:
Then there was some stuff about roulette tables and ass-kickings. Schultz was pretty het up! He concluded by saying, "Come on, Cantor. Don't hide behind your press secretary. Let's get it ooooooonnn."
Anyway, get excited, America, at the prospect of Ed Schultz and Eric Cantor yelling at each other for an hour, which will solve everything except for the part where it's actually Blue Dog Democrats killing meaningful health care reform because lobbyists paid them to do so.
RELATED:
After being chastized by Cantor's 'PR flack,' Ed Schultz challenges the congressman to a one-hour debate. [ThinkProgress]
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