Richard Cohen: Sarah Palin ... a Modern Day McCarthy
[Richard Cohen is syndicated columnist for the Washington Post.]
Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes its name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk.
But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes - and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. 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. For sheer disregard of the facts, her statement about President Obama's "death panel" has to rank with McCarthy's announcement that "I have here in my hand a list of 205" (or 72 or 57 or whatever) names of Communists in the State Department. They were both false - McCarthy's by commission, Palin's probably by omission. She rarely knows her facts.
What was most depressing about McCarthy's career was not just the excesses of the man himself, but the refusal of others - mainly his fellow Republicans - to either rein him in or defend his victims. Now we are seeing something similar with Palin. Say what you will about any of the health care proposals, not one of them suggests a "death panel" empowered to withhold medical services from the aged or the disabled. To suggest that one exists is reprehensible. To state it outright is either boldly demagogic or just plain loopy.
Yet, you can beat the bushes to a fine powder and find only two Republicans - Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - who had the courage or the decency to tell Palin that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
As with McCarthyism, Palinism is a product of its times. McCarthy exploited the public's fear of Communists.
Not only were they abroad, but they were here in America - spies, fellow travelers, pinkos, apologists, intellectuals and short, bespectacled minorities. It was their very ubiquity and invisibility that made them so dangerous.
Health care reform provides Palin with the same opportunity...
Read entire article at New York Daily News
Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes its name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk.
But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes - and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. 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. For sheer disregard of the facts, her statement about President Obama's "death panel" has to rank with McCarthy's announcement that "I have here in my hand a list of 205" (or 72 or 57 or whatever) names of Communists in the State Department. They were both false - McCarthy's by commission, Palin's probably by omission. She rarely knows her facts.
What was most depressing about McCarthy's career was not just the excesses of the man himself, but the refusal of others - mainly his fellow Republicans - to either rein him in or defend his victims. Now we are seeing something similar with Palin. Say what you will about any of the health care proposals, not one of them suggests a "death panel" empowered to withhold medical services from the aged or the disabled. To suggest that one exists is reprehensible. To state it outright is either boldly demagogic or just plain loopy.
Yet, you can beat the bushes to a fine powder and find only two Republicans - Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - who had the courage or the decency to tell Palin that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
As with McCarthyism, Palinism is a product of its times. McCarthy exploited the public's fear of Communists.
Not only were they abroad, but they were here in America - spies, fellow travelers, pinkos, apologists, intellectuals and short, bespectacled minorities. It was their very ubiquity and invisibility that made them so dangerous.
Health care reform provides Palin with the same opportunity...