Ready For Their Close-Up? GOP To Bring The Crazy Into Health Care Summit Spotlight

All week long, conservatives have been whining that President Obama’s offer for a televised bipartisan health care summit was a trap. As Jon Stewart said, it’s only a trap if you “got nothing.” If you come prepared with compelling ideas, it’s not a trap, it’s an opportunity.

So how are Republicans planning to use this opportunity?

By putting in the summit spotlight the craziest of the crazy.

Here’s are the highlights of the Republican summit line-up, along with their most famous quotes:

Rep. Paul Ryan, on his Medicare privatization plan:

“Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it?”

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, on congressional response to natural disasters:

“we’re not going to cry ’emergency’ every time we have a Katrina”

Rep. Charles Boustany, on the president’s citizenship:

“I think there are questions, we’ll have to see.”

Rep. Joe Barton, on greenhouse gas emissions:

“I would also point out that CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term. … I am creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, you’re Dr. Pepper, your Perrier water … You can’t regulate God.”

Sen. John Barrasso, trafficking in the “death panel” smear:

“The mammogram has saved [my wife’s] life, but yet this preventive panel that the bill says … would have not allowed her to have this care.”

Sen. Tom Coburn, on homosexuality:

“lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

Oh it’s going to be an awesome six hours tomorrow.