Let’s debate an anonymous “YEAH!”

I find it fascinating that what has gotten at least as much attention as the candidates in the Republican debates are noises made by persons unknown who happened to be in the the crowd. There was more fuss over the crowd reactions to the Texas execution rate than to Rick Perry’s opinions about the death penalty. Whether the Texas execution rate was worth cheering for is certainly debatable, for not only do I have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but even if I thought the death penalty was peachy and infallible, it’s not as if Perry prosecuted the condemned, sat on the jury, or pulled whatever switch is involved in executing them. He has virtually no role to play at all in the process, so the cheers properly should be directed at the Texas system.

As to who is cheering and why, it is anyone’s guess. Thus, analysis is rather pointless, and I never would have bothered with this post had the analysis of supposedly conservative crowds  analysis not been carried to an absurd level by He Who May Not Be Mentioned In This Blog.

This time, The He is freaked out — and frantically so — by an anonymous shout from the crowd while Ron Paul was being grilled by Wolf Blitzer on health care.

Here’s the video:

Lonely Conservative has an accurate explanation of what happened (along with a link to the hysteria-mongerer I am not allowed to name):

Wolf Blitzer asked a hypothetical question about a hypothetical person, one who chose not to have health insurance, getting sick and needing care. Ron Paul responded that people take a risk when they don’t have health insurance and that people should take responsibility for themselves. The crowd cheered. Blitzer followed up and asked if “society should just let him die.” One person, or possibly two, shouted “Yeah!” and Paul said “No.” That’s where this clip ends, but Paul went on to say that when he was a practicing physician, charities paid for indigent care, and no hospitals turn patients away. But the whole picture doesn’t play into the hands of those on the left who want to paint everyone who identifies with the tea party as cold hearted, selfish monsters.

What I do not like about this is that it seriously distorts the debate by shifting the focus away from what the candidates say to how a single anonymous person in the crowd might react.

Precisely who cheered Blitzer’s hypothetical? Can anyone be sure? How do we know it wasn’t a CNN stage hand thought it would help the show’s ratings? Or a leftist provocateur in Tea Party drag? (It’s not as if Gadsden Flag buttons are very expensive….) But even if we assume that the shouter was an on-the-level yahoo who really thinks the uninsured ought to be allowed to die, how much sense does it make to attribute his sentiment to an entire crowd, and from there to an entire party, if not an entire philosophy?

And what has this to do with health care? The philosophical question Ron Paul was attempting to wrestle with is broader than that, and could involve housing, utilities, even food. If a guy does not pay his rent or mortgage, should he be forced out on the street? If his utilities are turned off because he didn’t pay his bill, should he be allowed to freeze to death in the winter? If the same idiot went swimming irresponsibly in a hazardous current, should he be allowed to drown?

And how about denying government health care to smokers? Should the government let them die? Don’t laugh. The question is in the works.

AUGUSTA (AP) — The assault on tobacco use is resuming on several fronts in the State House, including denying benefits for MaineCare recipients who smoke and restricting smoking in private clubs.

Details of those and other bills are not yet fleshed out, but sponsors say they want to reduce Maine’s smoking rate and drive down taxpayers’ costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses.

Sen. Thomas Saviello said Friday he decided to introduce a bill to keep people receiving MaineCare — the state’s Medicaid program — from receiving benefits at the suggestion of a constituent who also works in a rural health care clinic.

Under government health care, they are already proposing to let people die.

I would suggest that ought to be more worrisome than an anonymous “YEAH!” in a crowd.