John McCormack from the Weekly Standard Slaps Dave Weigel and Others Over "Death Panels"

In case you missed it, Dave Weigel from the Washington Independent wrote a blog post today crying about the attention that the media has paid to Governor Palin's use of the term "death panel" on her Facebook page. Other members of the far-left blogosphere such as Steve Benen, Ezra Klein, Media Matters, and Greg Sargent have concurred with Weigel. What none of these bloggers point out is that an August poll from the Pew Research Center found that 50% of the adults surveyed who had heard of the term did not know or believed that the healthcare legislation would create death panels. According to an August NBC News poll, 45% of the adults surveyed believed that the healthcare legislation would likely allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly. These far-left bloggers are effectively arguing that the media shouldn't given any attention to a claim that (1) according to NBC News, nearly half the country's adults believes is true and (2) was made by someone with an 80% favorable rating from adults that identify with the opposition party to President Obama.

In any event, the other claim that these folks from the liberal blogosphere advance is that Governor Palin somehow changed her definition of the term "death panel." John McCormack from the Weekly Standard does a great job setting the historical record straight:

It is perfectly clear that Palin is talking about rationing in general. She specifically made an argument about the government's refusing to pay the cost of health care will lead to rationing care, and she also wrote that her "baby with Down Syndrome" could be affected by such rationing. How would "end-of-life counseling" for the elderly cause the death of a disabled baby?

As Ben Smith notes, Palin's spokesperson did cite the end-of-life counseling provision as a specific example of rationing in the bill. But that was just one example, which, Palin argued could put pressure on the elderly.

Obama himself acknowledged at an August 11 townhall that the "underlying argument" made by Palin was that his health care bill would "mean rationing of care"....

If Obama recognized Palin was talking about rationing of care, why can't Politifact and other journalists understand that as well? On August 12, Palin responded to Obama and made an argument that the end-of-life counseling provisions could sway the decisions of the elderly. She quoted Charles Lane, who wrote: "So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would 'place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,' I don’t think he’s being realistic." Feel free to disagree with that argument, but it's not a lie.

You can read John's entire post here.

As an aside, in case you wanted more background on these liberal bloggers, all you really need to know is that Steve Benen recently gave the following political advice to Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas:

If I were a campaign strategist for Blanche Lincoln...I'd encourage her to become the biggest champion of bold, progressive health care reform in the Senate. I'd urge Lincoln to show some major leadership, get out way in front, and position herself as a Kennedy-like guardian of those suffering under the status quo.

That's right, Steve Benen's advice to Senator Lincoln is to move further to the left on healthcare in a state that the Democrat party, under the leadership of John Kerry and Barack Obama, has turned from a solidly blue state in the 1990s to a solidly red state today. This conservative really hopes Lincoln takes Benen's advice.