Pete J. Smith, from lifesitenews.com, wrote a great piece on Obama's and Gov Palin's 1st political test on the national stage. Executive experience is everything as we see Obama retreat for another round:
The US Senate has sounded a hasty retreat on "death panels" in health-care reform by striking out the provision on "end-of-life counseling" from the bill.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), announced last week that the Senate Finance Committee has now expunged all "end-of-life" provisions from the Senate version of health-care reform in order "to avoid unintended consequences." Grassley admitted in a statement Wednesday that the storm of controversy surrounding the "end-of-life" provisions in detailed in section 1233 of the House version (H.R. 3200) expressed legitimate concerns that the elderly and infirm could end up pressured into lower-quality care or none at all.
[...]
The demise of "end-of-life" counseling has another aspect as it marks Sarah Palin's first political victory over Obama since the 2008 election.
The Governor's famous characterization of the House bill as dangerous legislation, paving the way for a bureaucratic "death panel" that would ration care, ignited the firestorm that led to massive scrutiny of the provision. Palin posted her original remarks on Aug. 7th remarks on Facebook, and a week later Grassley announced that the provision was gone.
At a town-hall style gathering in New Hampshire last Wednesday, Obama tried to defuse the controversy over "death panels" with an attempt at humor saying a "rumor" had arisen that Congress wanted to "basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't--it's too expensive to let her live anymore."
However Obama failed to regain control of the debate, and by the end of the week, commentators such as the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto said, "it is clear that she has won the debate." "One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to 'death panels' was inflammatory," opined Taranto in his "Best of the Web" column. "But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting."
Palin later blasted Obama for having Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel as his policy advisor on health-care reform. Emanuel outlined a policy for rationing health care called the "Complete Lives System," which would divert care to individuals with "the potential to live a complete life." (see coverage)
"Does [Obama] agree with the 'Complete Lives System,'" asked Palin. "If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on?" Palin also noted that Emanuel had just told the Washington Times that his "thinking has evolved" on what she called "the question of rationing care to benefit the strong and deny the weak." "How convenient that he disavowed his own work only after the nature of his scholarship was revealed to the public at large," said Palin in comments posted on her Facebook page .
Full Article At:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09081710.html
