The mainstream media and left wing bloggers are obsessed with Sarah Palin. She is no longer a public official nor currently running for any office, but whenever she writes a provocative article or a catchy phrase on her Facebook page, the MSM and lefty pundits raise a storm of protest. This, of course, causes Republican officeholders, Fox News and conservative bloggers to take note of the point she made. All of this attention keeps her in the news, helps sell her book and makes her a speaker of demand on the Tea Party circuit.
Let's look at a few examples. Last summer, Palin posted an article about the health care reform bills under consideration in Congress at the time as potentially creating "Death Panels" that would cause people seeking public health care to have their need for health care determined by bureaucrats who would weigh the relative value of such people against the value of others in need of care. This Palin comment raised questions about a health care efficiency panel to be established in the Department of Health and Human Services and a provision to provide end-of-life counseling to Medicare beneficiaries every five years or so.
Sarah Palin's use of the term "Death Panels" created an outcry from Democrats denying that any bill under consideration would create such panels. However, this comment did put a focus on the end-of-life counseling provided for in the legislation. The Democrats said it was just voluntary and only clarified that Medicare would pay for such consultations between doctors and patients. Republicans responded to the various comments on this provision and occasionally used Palin's term "Death Panels", which led many Democrats, including the President, to say that Republicans in general were misrepresenting the bills as creating "Death Panels".
No matter what side of this discussion anyone is on, it cannot be denied that Sarah Palin's little article on Facebook got a lot of politicians talking about a provision in the pending legislation that most Americans did not know was even in the bills.
Similarly, when a major newspaper revealed that Rahm Emanuel called some very liberal Democratic members of Congress "F***g Retards" during one of those closed door meetings on health care legislation without any Republicans present, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook article urging Emanuel to resign for being so insensitive to mentally challenged people by using the "R word". Some might suggest that all extremely liberal Democrats are "mentally challenged", so I was actually surprised that the White House Chief of Staff would say something that many conservatives would agree with, if it had not been for his very crude manner of speaking.
The outcry about Palin's call for Emanuel's resignation got immediate attention at the White House, and Rahm was required to call Tim Shriver, the Chairman of the Special Olympics, to apologize. Other organizations representing the handicapped group in question, however, quickly pointed out that calling a member of the Kennedy clan, who happens to run the Special Olympics, does not make the apology sufficient for all those so handicapped. This meant that Rahm had to meet with representatives of these other groups to apologize.
What is amazing about these Emanuel attempts at redemption for his crass remark is that none of the phone calls of apology or meetings to apologize would have occurred if Sarah Palin had not written about it on Facebook!
Now the MSM and left wing bloggers are all excited that they found out that Sarah Palin wrote some notes for her speech to the Tea Party Convention on her hand! Wow! How shocking! Chris Matthews of the lefty MSNBC questioned whether such a "palm reader" could ever be President. It appears that the leftists think only Ivy League Teleprompter-dependent liberals should be President!
What is really amusing to me is why Sarah Palin stirs up so much angst among the MSM and left wingers. Why do they spend so much time and attention on a private citizen with a Facebook page?
It certainly can't be because she was the losing candidate for Vice President on a major party ticket.
The last unsuccessful VP candidate on the Democratic ticket, someone named John Edwards, got no attention from the MSM and left wingers, even while he was running for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, when he fathered a "love child" with his mistress while his wife was being treated for cancer... until the National Enquirer broke the story!
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