HUFFINGTON POST, September 14, 2011--Rachel Maddow said she knew who the "clear loser" of Monday's GOP presidential debate was: a 30-year-old sick man with no health insurance.
As Maddow put it, the audience at the debate "wants him dead." She was referring, of course, to the most attention-getting moment at the debate, when, after moderator Wolf Blitzer wondered whether the state should let a sick man with no insurance die, several audience members shouted, "yeah!"
Maddow said that the moment might have been shocking, but for the fact that a similar audience hadalso cheered executions during a previous GOP debate when a question was put to Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
"The audience was not cheering one specific execution," she said. "They were cheering the very idea...of historically high numbers of executions." Maddow then noted that Texas executed another man just on Tuesday. She lamented the fact that the issue has entered the national conversation because "it is an applause line," and not because Perry has presided over at least one execution -- that of Cameron Todd Willingham -- that many, many people think sent an innocent man to his grave.
"Does anyone believe even that would hurt him with this year's Republican voters?" Maddow asked, before playing the footage of audience cheering again.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, September 15th 2011 at 1:31PM
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