Andrew McCarthy: I can’t spare this woman. She fights.
Posted by Moe Lane (Profile)
Monday, August 17th at 2:53PM EDT
Ace over at AoSHQ wrote a reasonably comprehensive, well-worth-reading post about why he agreed with Andrew McCarthy disagreeing with the NRO editorial board over ex-Gov. Palin’s successful use of ‘death panel‘ rhetoric in shaping the debate. I’m not going to try to reinvent the wheel; as I said, Ace’s post is well worth reading. I’m just going to note that I’ve spent the last day or so trying to figure out a way to get Palin to favorably mention tort reform in her next Facebook note… and that it never even occurred to me to try to get the NRO editorial board on-message.
Not that it wouldn’t be great if they did, of course. It’s just… well…
redstate.com
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Liberals hate the "not nice" people (if they're conservative) who score against them - Reagan, Gingrich, Rove, Cheney, Rush, Coulter, and now Palin. But "not nice" folks on the liberal side (Ivins, Dowd) are celebrated as witty.
Palin Was Right on the “Death Panels” — A Dissent from Today's NRO Editorial [Andy McCarthy]
Monday's NRO editorial, "Rationing and Rationality," is fine insofar as it takes aim at the disaster that would be bureaucratic healthcare rationing — particularly, Obamacare's likely (I'd say inevitable) accelerator affect effect on the drive to euthanasia when added to the already "baleful trends among bioethicists" that the editors cite. But I respectfully dissent from this passage:
To conclude from these possibilities to the accusation that President Obama’s favored legislation will lead to “death panels” deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved — let alone that Obama desires this outcome — is to leap across a logical canyon. It may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less. But that does not mean that there is nothing to worry about. Our response to Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics is to paraphrase Peter Viereck: We should be against hysteria — including hysteria about hysteria.
I don't see any wisdom in taking a shot at Governor Palin at this moment when, finding themselves unable to defend the plan against her indictment, Democrats have backed down and withdrawn their "end-of-life counseling" boards. Palin did a tremendous service here. Opinion elites didn't like what the editors imply is the "hysteria" of her "death panels" charge. Many of those same elites didn't like Ronald Reagan's jarring "evil empire" rhetoric. But "death panels" caught on with the public just like "evil empire" did because, for all their "heat rather than light" tut-tutting, critics could never quite discredit it. ("BusHitler," by contrast, did not catch on with the public because it was so easily refuted.)
The editors implicitly concede that Palin is on to something. Indeed, from an Obamaesque perch, they find themselves admonishing both "Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics." With due respect, there's a right side and a wrong side on this one. Above the fray is not gonna cut it.
Sure, the editors acknowledge, there's lots of reason to be worried that we're speeding down the road toward euthanasia and that Obamacare could make things worse. But it's somehow "to leap across a logical canyon" to suggest that death panels are imminent or that they are what Obama wants.
On the latter, who cares what Obama personally wants? I don't see why we should play into the personality cult that the Left is hoping will overcome the deep substantive flaws in the president's policies. I happen to think that something like death panels is exactly what is desired by Obama — who is an abortion extremist, who supported a form of infanticide when he was an Illinois state legislator, and who has wondered aloud about the value of end-of-life care provided for his own grandmother.
Obama is "nice" and smooth. But he's not good. He's a cold-blooded SOB.
But Obama's personal feelings are beside the point. What matters is what's in the bill.
In suggesting it's hyperbole to say death panels are — or were — in the bill, the editors engage in a little hysteria of their own, describing the function of such panels as "deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved." But few people worried about death panels think the process will be anything so crude. It will be what Mark Steyn described in his column this weekend: the bureaucrats won't pull the plug on you; they will gradually restrict your access to various forms of treatment while you wither away prematurely. Maybe if Palin had called them "Dying on the Vine Panels" our opinion elites would have been more understanding — though I doubt it, Palin derangement syndrome having proved itself more infectious than Bush derangement syndrome.
The editors further suggest that Palin could be wrong — not that she is wrong, but she could be. After all, they reason, "it may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less."
Really? First of all, there is no more to spend. Second, the editors themselves admit at the very beginning of the editorial that "rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient’s best interest can be done in a world of finite resources." The whole point of health-care "reform" is to enable something other than the combination of individual liberty and market forces — namely, government bureaucrats — to do the inevitable rationing. Third and finally, as I discuss in my column this morning, the Obamacare proposal has a remedy for "a society as litigious as ours": it systematically cuts off access to the courts so that the decisions of the executive branch are final. The bill is designed to insure against litigation pressure to spend more rather than treat less.
I think Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, "end-of-life counseling" would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we'd have lost the public. I respectfully dissent.
corner.nationalreview.com
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Andy McCarthy: Hey, What's All This Nonsense about Criticising Sarah Palin for her "Death Panels" Formulation?
This is the sort of argument we've had here a lot. I'm with McCarthy on this.
I don't see what makes her formulation particularly egregious when the White House is engaging in daily demonizations. "Death panels" is particularly evocative, and maybe a bit under-subtle. So what? We are talking style points at this point, and I hardly think that style is the most important concern.
Further, what Obama envisioned is a "death panel." I think the real objection here is that some think "death panels" are useful and proper, and they don't like Palin's lack of "nuance" in branding them as wholly bad.
Well, that's an argument that can be made. But it should be made, rather than just shrieking about Palin's word choice.
I think Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, "end-of-life counseling" would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we'd have lost the public. I respectfully dissent.
He's dissenting from NRO's editorial, incidentally.
This is dumb, too:
The editors further suggest that Palin could be wrong — not that she is wrong, but she could be. After all, they reason, "it may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less."
Well, look old chums: Palin can only criticise the bill proposed, not some alternative bill that might emerge after years of being modified/amended by court intervention. She is criticizing the bill that is, not some hypoethetical one that might be.
Further, it's Obama's rationing that is the whole basis for his (ludicrous) claim this will actually cost less than the current system. So, it's Scylla and Charybdis: Either Obama gets his way on bending the curve, in which case it's rationing care for those near the end of life; or he loses those provisions, whether by legislative amendment or court order, in which case the deficit explodes.
It's one or the other, and both are bad. Palin's fault is, what? That she focuses on Obama's stated plan (bad) rather than the one which might eventually emerge (also bad)?
I could see, certainly, criticism of her forumaltion if it were dishonest. But it's not dishonest -- it's merely stark.
I think a lot of GOP pundits overly share liberals' fears that whole swaths of the conservative movement are corncob-smokin' banjo-strokin' cousin'-pokin' inbred mutant redneck race warriors. And so they get all upset that, here, Sarah Palin is filling these dopes with images of ICU Stormtroopers literally barging into grandma's room to smother her with a pillow.
Well, look: we cannot take all the life out of our rhetoric to tailor to the 0.00001% of the populace who might take it "the wrong way." Pretty much no one thinks "death panels" means actual face-smothering murder. And it seems to me an inordinate amount of worry-worting is going on here that Palin's term will be misinterpreted by her drooling subcretious supporters.
Liberals worry about that an awful lot. Liberals worry about that far too much, in fact, and are doing all the worrying on that score that is necessary. We don't really need to cater to their fears of Rethuglicans.
"Nice" is Overrated: In politics, at least.
Just three weeks ago, I was writing in the Ottawa Citizen against niceness. I have pursued the theme recently with praise (sometimes backhanded) not only for the politics, but for the tone, of such as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in the United States. They are by no means the only practitioners of what we'll call the "not nice" style in contemporary politics. Newt Gingrich is usually mentioned in such dispatches; and I could list a selection of Barack Obama's "policy czars" with demonstrated shoot-from-the-lip propensities. But I would like to preserve a "nice" (in the logical sense) distinction between candour and thuggery.
Candour is when you tell a truth that is disturbing, in language so unambiguous that persons in polite company will not want to hear you. It is a way to lose the respect of the genteel -- of those who are "respectable" in the shallowest sense. Rude language is quite unnecessary to this end: the hard truth itself, spoken plainly and publicly, will give sufficient offence.
That's about right.
Indeed! I was trying to think of a specific Obama scare-tactic, and came up short. Slublog reminds:
I love how the media and pundits are jumping ugly all over Palin for "death panels" but completely ignoring the fact that the president of the United States accused doctors of lopping off body parts for cash.
Right. Let's kill Palin for "death panels," while giving Obama a pass for entrepreneurial amputations and "predatory tonsillectomies." (I think I saw that latter phrase first used by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.)
ace.mu.nu |
