Especially this part:
In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”
What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”
Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?
Herbert rightly points out that in this age of “truthiness,” what should be a huge gaffe is completely unnoticed by the media at large.
No one will call Sarah Palin on this because people are too focused on things like her glasses and haircut and the size of her flag pin (gi-NORMOUS!) and her winks. No one is really examining the content of her words. The AARP should be up in arms about this but I wonder how many folks have even bothered to notice? It's all style over substance.
And that, to me, is a huge menace to freedom.
