Via Matt comes this exchange between Mike Huckabee adviser Jim Pinkerton and David Corn in which Pinkerton trots out an argument we’re likely to see a lot of in the coming year, which is, Democrats are gonna give health care to immigrants!
Ugly stuff. As it happens, it’s hard for me to imagine any Democrat proposing a health care plan that covers illegal immigrants, not because doing so would be bad policy from a public health perspective, but because they would be demagogued by Jim Pinkerton. So, instead, we’ll continue to eat food handled by ill immigrants, ride buses with sick children, take change from sniffling cashiers, and generally cut off our stuffed noses to spite our angry faces. It’s charming stuff. Meanwhile, it’s a useful insight into the assumed contours of contemporary politics that Pinkerton thinks the fact that Huckabee won’t give health care to illegal immigrants is more electorally powerful than the fact that he
Ugly stuff. As it happens, it’s hard for me to imagine any Democrat proposing a health care plan that covers illegal immigrants, not because doing so would be bad policy from a public health perspective, but because they would be demagogued by Jim Pinkerton. So, instead, we’ll continue to eat food handled by ill immigrants, ride buses with sick children, take change from sniffling cashiers, and generally cut off our stuffed noses to spite our angry faces. It’s charming stuff. Meanwhile, it’s a useful insight into the assumed contours of contemporary politics that Pinkerton thinks the fact that Huckabee won’t give health care to illegal immigrants is more electorally powerful than the fact that he also won’t give health care to Americans.
