Rick Santorum wins the prize for the worst Nelson Mandela tribute

In an appearance on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly Thursday, Santorum likened Mandela's anti-apartheid crusade to Republicans' continued efforts to dismantle the president's health care law.

"He was fighting against some great injustice," Santorum said, "and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives. And ObamaCare is front and center in that."

Leaving aside the fact that shanghaiing a world leader's death to peddle your political beliefs is gross opportunism at its worst, Santorum's comparison is flawed for another simple reason: Mandela was a prominent proponent of expanding access to health care, especially for the poor and disadvantaged.

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From a South African department of health report on the nation's health care system:

Free public health care? Sounds like socialism to me.

There's more.

South Africa's constitution enshrines a "right" to health care in the same subsection that it guarantees the rights to "sufficient food and water." The Kaiser Family Foundation named an award after Mandela honoring "the efforts of individuals who make extraordinary contributions to improving the health and health care of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population in South Africa and internationally." And Mandela's work, both in office and after, laid the groundwork for South Africa's new universal health care system.

We're sure Rick Santorum will be issuing a retraction any moment now.