Specter Wastes No Time In Politicizing Jack Kemp’s Death

Despicable:

“Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn’t want me as their candidate,” Mr. Specter said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But as a matter of principle, I’m becoming much more comfortable with the Democrats’ approach. And one of the items that I’m working on, Bob, is funding for medical research.”

Mr. Specter continued: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”

Video, via Hot Air:

Ed Morressey calls Specter’s assertion a “grotesque lie”:

During Republican control of Congress, federal spending on health research and regulation increased 46% after inflation, from $49 billion a year to $72 billion a year, or about 7% increase each year.  That’s almost the same rate of increase as Defense spending got in the same period (48%), when we actually had a real war on our hands, and not a political contrivance for excusing federal spending.

Specter is right about one thing, however. He is right at home with the “Democrat’s approach”, taking a page right out of another Dem hack’s playbook. Remember this classic?:

Speaking at a rally in Iowa on Monday — the day after Reeve’s death — Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards noted the performer’s advocacy for stem-cell research for finding a cure for spinal injuries. The actor, who died of heart failure on Sunday evening, had championed the cause ever since a 1995 horse-riding accident left him paralyzed.

Edwards was discussing stem-cell research with the Iowa audience when he said: “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk again. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

No shame.