The Two Sarah Palins
A stupid remark from Sarah Palin about "death panels" run by Obama bureaucrats begets some really stupid responses from America's punditocracy. First up, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen compares the aw-shucks Alaskan to Tailgunner Joe McCarthy. There is much nonsense in the piece (so read the whole thing), but this is a pretty representative sample:
As with McCarthyism, Palinism is a product of its times. McCarthy exploited the public's fear of communism and communists. Not only were they abroad, but they were here in America–spies, fellow travelers, pinkos, apologists, intellectuals and short, bespectacled minorities. It was their very ubiquity and invisibility that made them so dangerous.
Health-care reform provides Palin the same opportunity. The klutziness of Obama's effort–people think they know what they can lose but have no idea of what they can gain–again raises the specter of invisible forces that will take but not give, dictate but not listen, tax but not provide. But as is almost always the case with right-wing populists, the shooter has aimed at her own foot. Palin's "death panel" remarks either killed or helped kill the proposal to offer end-of-life counseling. The victims will be the poor, the uninformed and the ideologically blind who will find themselves unable to make a graceful exit. The affluent have their living wills and such. The poor have only their grief.
Newark Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine says that Palin isn't a McCarthyite…because she's a Luxembourgian socialist!
Liberal critics focused on the fact the proposal in question did not include any such "death panels." But being liberals, they endorsed Palin's central thesis: that Medicare should indeed provide essentially unlimited coverage for Palin's child as well as her parents.
But senior citizens who receive Medicare benefits pay only a fraction of the cost of the coverage, with the bulk coming from the taxpayers. As for Palin's child, she seems to be assuming that his care comes under the Medicare law. That seems unlikely, but if he is indeed covered by it or some other government program, then the entire cost of his treatment is being paid by taxpayers.
Now let us assume that the panel Palin envisions is created and various of her relatives are paraded before it. The panelists would be deciding not whether the relative in question should receive treatment. They would be deciding whether the taxpayers should fund that treatment.
Palin agrees with the liberals that it's evil to deny that payment.
So, dear readers, is Palin a pinko commie or pinko commie hunter? Discuss.
