Did Somebody Spike Sen. Grassley’s Ovaltine?

If you haven’t been following Sen. Chuck Grassley’s psychodrama, here are the recent developments. The Republican who personally delayed a health care reform has pretty much decided not to vote for any bill, even if he likes it, and is now offended that the president had the audacity to quote him accurately.

Grassley helped spread the outright lie that health care reform would create “death panels,” which he famously described as “a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

The senator was just quoted by NBC as saying, “[President Obama] gave some speeches during August in which he was associating me with efforts to make this a political document and efforts that other people in the country were making to give extremes, like on the end-of-life situation and associating me with things — I [never] used the words he said.”

The “end-of-life situation” being a reference to end-of-life counseling that Republicans, led by Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley, mischaracterized as something that you, in the Iowa senator’s words, “have every right to fear.” — PS

NBC / First Read:

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he “resents” some of the things the administration and President Obama said and did during the August recess. In particular, Grassley took umbrage with President Obama attaching him to the death panel controversy. He said it was something he “took very personally.”

[…] And on death panels last month, Grassley did lend credence to the idea that the government would “determine if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

“There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life,” Grassley said at an Iowa town hall after fielding a question about it from a town hall attendee. “And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

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