I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of this around, but HotAir posted two of these this afternoon, so I thought I’d give it a go: Liberals don’t believe Sarah Palin is writing her pieces on Facebook. Interesting.

I’d say it’s plausible – no one for a second thinks she’s sitting at her kitchen table whipping this stuff out. Each of Palin’s pieces on health care and energy have been heavily sourced and remind me of an age-old university custom: professors have graduate assistants who do the grunt work of research, and the professor writes most if not all of the paper, thus submitted to an academic journal for peer review. I don’t see a problem with this because all politicians do it. When a Senator or Congressman (or President) posts an op-ed piece, we know full-well that aides, interns, speechwriters and other folk had a hand in its construction.

Yet, as with everything Palin, this is getting a much nastier spin. The idea seems to be that Palin is too stupid to have written her entries on Facebook and her op-eds in WSJ and WaPo. See, when going after Palin, it’s not enough to attack the merit or lack thereof of her argument, so they simply attack the woman. This sting is palpable for her critics, because this person they love to savage as stupid and vain derailed KennedyCare with her critique of Section 1233. Palin, using a Facebook account, did more than George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan and David Frum ever could: through her writing, she shifted the debate.

Palin’s deployment of the phrase “death panels” was the most effective boilerplate produced by a Conservative since Pres. Bush’s use of the phrase “Axis of Evil.” This drives Liberals and Donkeys absolutely batty. Palin’s latest strike, this time on the OpEd page of WSJ, has caused a firestorm.

I assume the part that sticks in the Donkey craw is this:

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such "waste and inefficiency" and "unwarranted subsidies" in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn't think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that "in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

No matter how many egg-heads and how many Ivy League degrees the White House trots out, it cannot refute the simple fact that Palin is correct. The government is inefficient, health care would ultimately be rationed, and those making decisions about rationing would be unelected bureaucrats, thus giving us death panels.

Critics of Palin – including the White House, which responded yet again to this supposed idiot – say that there are no death panels in HB 3200. Palin never said there was – she coined a phrase to describe what the endgame would be in Section 1233 of the bill for citizens with low productivity and expensive medical conditions (namely, the elderly and people like her son Trig who has Down syndrome). They can call her stupid until the cows come home, but it doesn’t counter her argument.

Here’s the White House dig at Palin, as reported by Politico today:

Every non-partisan organization that has looked at her claims say they are false. And the ideas in her op-ed are both scary and risky. Eliminating Medicare and giving our seniors vouchers instead is a bad idea that we shouldn't adopt.

Here is what Palin said:

As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Notice that the White House doesn’t list which “non-partisan” organizations they’re referencing, nor does the White House tell us which claims are false. It’s just “all of them” apparently. Humorously, the one specific they do bother to cite is incorrect: in her Op-Ed, Palin does not propose eliminating Medicare. Imagine a Donkey trying to scare old people into thinking a GOPer is going to take away their Medicare and Social Security. The problem for the White House is they’re way too late to this party – hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans have gone to town halls and have been insulted, threatened and talked down to by Donkey pol after Donkey pol.

Gregory Dunn’s issue over at HuffPo seems to be that there’s no way Palin is writing this stuff because he’s read some of her emails and he himself is a fine writer, yes, what with ironic phrasings such as:

They have a lot riding on the deal. Murdoch has anted up a seven-figure advance for a book written by someone who can't construct two cohesive sentences together.

Uh, Gregory, I might be a hack nobody’s ever heard of, but I don’t know anyone who can “construct two cohesive sentences together.” I know people who can construct sentences, and I know people who can put two sentences together, but to construct two sentences at the same time defies the space-time continuum. Furthermore, the word you’re looking for is “coherent,” not “cohesive.” Cohesive is technically not inaccurate, but it’s clumsy and so close to “coherent” you obviously didn’t know there was a difference.

Over at The Atlantic, the magazine from which Andrew Sullivan has been aching to get amniotic fluid from Sarah Palin in order to prove Trig is not her child, we have Mark Ambinger giving a more eloquent account of how there’s no way in hell that a dumb bunny like Sarah Palin could be writing these things. Ambinger writes:

By implying, incidentally, that Palin gets help from a speechwriter, I mean to make an observation. Barack Obama didn't draft his op-ed, either.  But, reading Obama, it's not a leap to believe that the ideas are truly his.  Palin has no chops and no experience talking about health care and isn't participating in this debate; the content of her op-ed piece isn't original, and the points are points that Republicans make every day.  

Ambinger falls into the trap that enabled a half-term Senator with zero experience leading, managing or chairing anything of substance to be elected POTUS: The Double Standard. He writes that it’s not a leap to think Obama wrote his piece, but Palin spouts talking points.

Dude, seriously?

The Dear Leader has written two books, and I’ve read about a third of both. The first, Dreams from My Father, is considered a classic of political narrative, just as every time TDL drops a deuce it’s considered a classic of Presidential bowel clearance (as a critique, no one ever points out the preposition should be “of” not “from,” but whatever). The second, The Audacity of Hope, is a cut and paste political primer. It is my opinion (as a person who reads a whole lot of nonfiction, political books every single year) that the same two people did not write both books. Like the conspiracy theory floating around and having listened to TDL speak, I believe he wrote most of The Audacity of Hope but almost none of Dreams of My Father.  How can I prove this? I can’t, nor do I care to. It’s my gut instinct.

Ambinger’s excerpt quoted above is pretty much the entire piece. In the first sentence he tells us he’s being fair. In the second, he admits what I did at the beginning of this piece – few politicians write every word of their op-eds. He then tells us it’s not a leap to think TDL could write his. One question: why? Have you ever heard the man speak off prompter? Every time he opens his mouth mistakes are made, syntax is machette’d, and, well, it’s not pretty. He then tells us Palin’s an idiot – no chops, no experience, etc, and she’s unoriginal and relying on talking points.

So, being the mayor of a town and the governor of a state doesn’t count as experience, but going to Harvard Law, race-hustling, overseeing a failed nine-figure foundation project, doing zero as a state senator while logging a half-term as a U.S. Senator while running for POTUS during most of that time is “chops?” It’s “experience?” Come again?

Facts are facts, though, and no matter how they try to skew reality, people do remember. A roomful of PhDs couldn’t do what Sarah Palin did: she fundamentally altered the national discussion over the public option in HB 3200. They can whimper and moan about ghostwriters and IQs all they want, but it doesn’t really matter: nobody gives a shit what they write. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, makes national headlines every time she publishes a piece.

Tell me again who’s earned their chops, who has a right to say what? Tell me again what you’ve read of TDL’s that wasn’t his two books? No one could read both books and honestly think that the same person wrote both of them. His writing gets worse.  

They’ll continue to scream, though, because that is all they know how to do. Sarah Palin writes something, and Liberals turn into bitches. Good times – hope women everywhere feel great about two aging white men calling a young, accomplished, successful woman and mother stupid. We sure have come a long way.