THAT'S AS CLOSE AS HE GETS TO INSIGHT:

Palin's Red Menace (Richard Cohen, August 18, 2009, Washington Post)

In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently did not have his facts straight. He got huge amounts of attention anyway.

With Palin, the subject is health care, which in many ways is the Red Menace of our day and lends itself to a kind of political pornography.

Almost, but it isn't "health care," that she's warning about but the President's general disregard for life. Even setting aside the New York Times Magazine interview where he explicitly talks about an independent group guiding what procedures the elderly should get, this is after all a politician who supports abortion on demand, even infanticide, and embryonic stem cell harvesting. Mr. Cohen is right though, this sort of radically pro-Death politics is the Red Menace of our day. And just as McCarthism was successful because the communists and fellow travelers were so alien to American values, so too did Ms Palin have little difficulty defeating the Death Panels because they're so creepy. They aren't porn, they're snuff films.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2009 7:36 AM