Hypocrisy Alert: Thompson Attacks Baldwin On Health-Care Takeover, But Look Who's Talking

US Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, (R), is running a campaign ad against his opponent US Rep. Tammy Baldwin that accuses her of favoring a federal takeover of health care.

But Thompson, a former Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been described as key supporter of ObamaCare before he flipped in the campaign to oppose it.

And look at his own explanation about running federal health-care programs he said make him Senate-worthy:

I'll give you how big my department was: We have all the children programs, all the elderly programs, all the welfare programs, all the social services programs, all the drug production programs, we run FDA which regulates 25 percent of the gross national product, run CDC which is the organization that determines what an infectious disease is, ran the National Institutes of Health which is the greatest research center in the world, responsible for all the Native Americans and Alaskan Natives' health, responsible for all the international health of anybody that's coming to the United States...

So there's hardly anybody that has the knowledge or the base of knowledge that I do.

By the way - - in case you missed it - - the same article also has Tommy's tortured explanation for his role in health-care management after 9/18.

And then after 9/18, I was responsible for the public health of all Americans, responsible for preventing any attack using weaponized medicines like the plague, like smallpox, like anthrax, like tellurium.

9/18? Or did he mean 9/11?

Which led to these remarks from then-spokesman Brian Nemoir, now gone from that campaign post in the wake of his snarky distribution of a email and video a few weeks ago meant to undermine Baldwin, who is openly gay:

"There are two plausible explanations as to the recent 9/18 versus 9/11 reference made by Tommy Thompson at a recent event," said campaign spokesman Brian Nemoir. "First, the entire civilized world has the wrong date of this historic and tragic attack on our nation's soil; second, during a spirited campaign appearance Tommy Thompson misspoke regarding an horrific episode in our country’s history during which he played a key leadership role. The campaign is fully examining both scenarios."

He declined to answer a follow-up question on whether that meant Thompson had misspoken.

But after the article was initially published, Nemoir contacted The Huffington Post again and clarified that Thompson was actually referring to the date the anthrax letters were received.

"As a point of clarification, 9/18/01 is in reference to the anthrax attacks on specific members of congress and varied members of the news media," wrote Nemoir.

Hat tip, Blogging Blue.