Rebutting Rick Santorum isn’t exactly a challenge, but occasionally it’s fun. Here’s something he apparently said last week:

Speaking at a Young Americans for Freedom event on Friday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) offered an unusual assessment of what happens when “the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country.” “It’s actually a pretty clever system,” the former presidential candidate explained, “Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can’t vote against you.” [Emphasis added.]

The prevailing interpretation is that he’s saying nationalized healthcare is a way for the party in power to effectively kill people who don’t vote for them.

Look at what he said, though—while grammatically awkward, his statement allows for healthcare for “the people who can vote.” It’s the “people who can’t vote” who wouldn’t be getting healthcare, which makes no sense if the point is to stop them from voting. The only way this makes sense is if the people who aren’t voting for the party in power have already been disenfranchised somehow. Perhaps Santorum said too much here…

Or perhaps I’m overthinking the whole thing, and Rick Santorum is a fool talking out of his ass. Apply Occam’s Razor here.

Photo credit: By Lars Karlsson (Keqs) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons.