It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt

Those words were spoken by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, over 100 years ago. Today, certain members of the Republican Party could use a refresher course in that school of thought. The most entertaining and best example of “Mama see, Mama saw, Mama say, What?!” (as John Stewart would put it) came from Sarah Palin yesterday, via her Facebook.

The National Healthcare System debate is stirring up feelings on both sides of the political spectrum, and the crazies are out in force. Foremost among them now is former GOP Vice President Candidate/Former GOP Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Yesterday, this was the statement she broadcasted on her Facebook (original source can be found Here:

“As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.

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.”

I read this and felt my brain cells dying. I don’t recall anyone (on either side of the Aisle) mentioning a “death panel” to make decisions about who can live and who can die, who can receive coverage and who can’t. I know the GOP seems to be running out of logical arguments and is having something similar to an SAT Buzzword comment, but they seem to be confusing some of their terms. One of their favorite buzzwords is “Socialism”, they seem to be confusing “socialism” with “Nazism.” The two are not similar.

Sarah Palin resigned her position and requested, (in a move reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”) that the press “stop making things up” and to remove her family from the public eye; then in a move reminiscent of Tricky Dick’s return to politics, she decides it’s ok for her to make things up and drag her family, in the shape of her Down Syndrome baby, right back into the spotlight.

Palin was once heralded as the Shining Beacon of Hope for the Republican Party. I sincerely hope the GOP is reconsidering. Right now the basic GOP strategy is very similar to the old High School English/AP Essay Fall Back strategy, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, confound them with bullshit.” While that strategy works well in essay’s so long as you’re writing well defended bull, but some of the recent stuff from the GOP can’t even claim to be that.

If the current Republican strategy continues the fear-mongering and nonsense spouting of the last 8 years, not only are they insulting the American electorate, they are an embarrassment to the American political system.

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~ by thesituationreport on August 10, 2009.