A longtime ago a chief marketing officer introduced me to the term, “The Big Lie.” Apparently, this also applies to politics.
As he put it, in not a complementary way, the bigger the lie that is told the easier it is to believe.
Sarah Palin has been practicing Big Lie politics.
She recently posted on her Facebook account:
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”Now, readers of this blog know I am not enamored by the Democratic health care bills—my view is that they are about a little cost containment “lite,” shave the providers a little bit, and raise taxes by at least $500 billion and call it “health care reform.” I am more than disappointed in where the majority party has taken this.
But what Palin and a number of other right-wingers are doing is appalling.
And, too often Republican and conservative leaders have attempted to rationalize this behavior—if not outright use it for political advantage. Newt Gingrich responding to Palin's comments for example, “Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept. …You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in American who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.”
Rather than rationalizing this kind of thing it’s high time that leading Republicans and conservatives disavow any connection to this kind of behavior—they know better.
It looks like lots of mainstream Americans are having trouble with the Democrat’s health care plan. They should.
But these extremists who just plain misrepresent the facts only undermine credible criticism and they risk a backlash that will just bounce this debate from one extreme to another that would have nothing to do with the honest health care debate this country needs.
Just how much lower are they prepared to go?
Patriots indeed.
