Dog bites man. Sun rises in east. Tim Pawlenty plays "kick the starving poor person (who’s probably black anyway) to win the CPAC vote":

Appearing on Fox News’s "On the Record with Greta Van Sustren" last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.

"Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition," Pawlenty said. "They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic."

Supporters of the federal law would contend that many people go to ERs precisely because they do not have the insurance to pay for a primary care physician.

As usual, my absentee governor, in his bid to win the votes of the evil heartless racist yahoos known as "Republican base voters", goes the extra mile in terms in venality, stupidity, ignorance and inhumanity.

That Federal law that Governor Gutshot complains about? It already allows emergency rooms to turn away persons with non-emergency health conditions (h/t mcjoan). But he either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care — or quite possibly both — which is funny as hell as he used to run a law practice with his former good buddy Eric Magnuson, who he appointed as Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court two years ago. (I say "former" because Chief Justic Magnuson has himself become disenchanted with his former law partner’s fiscally-hostile attitude towards Minnesota’s justice system.)

If the 2012 Republican presidential primary can be described as a race to the bottom, ethically, morally and intellectually, then Gutshot’s working hard to stake out the Challenger Deep.