Alan Grayson’s Joe Wilson moment

First there was Rep. Joe Wilson’s “famous ‘You lie!’ outburst,” said the Albany, Ga., Herald in an editorial. Now we have Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) saying that “the Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick” (watch Grayson’s speech). Seriously, “are there any adults in the House?” Grayson’s “obnoxious” provocation was “every bit as boorish, classless, and childish as Wilson’s was”—and to top it off, Grayson voted to censure Wilson.

“I’m not going to defend” Grayson’s “over-the-top comments,” said Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo. But “gimme a break”—how is this a “controversy when half the Republican elected officials in the country have been saying for the last couple months, as a statement of purported fact, that the Democrats want to institute ‘death panels’ that will euthanize or deny care” to the elderly and infirm?

That’s a pretty good description of the “euthanasia” system Grayson and his fellow Democrats are championing, said Erick Erickson in RedState. And instead of apologizing for his attack on the GOP, Grayson continued his “descent into insanity,” apologizing to the Americans who died because of “this ‘holocaust’ in health care.” That just “cheapens” the Holocaust (watch Grayson’s apology speech).

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The holocaust reference may have been “gratuitous and unnecessary,” said John Nichols in The Nation, but the real reason “Washington Republicans are horrified, horrified, horrified” by Grayson’s “bluntness” is that he’s a Democrat who actually takes the health-care fight “seriously enough to try and win it.”

Define “win,” said Daniel Libit in Politico. In a 24-hour period we had Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) calling President Obama an “enemy of humanity,” Grayson’s “die quickly” salvo, and Republican National Committee head Michael Steele calling Tom Friedman a “nut job” for worrying that all this “hot talk” will lead to violence. Our “arms race of incendiary rhetoric” is “quickly reaching the point of mutually assured destruction.”