Sarah Palin is drawing attention to the real policy issues that the country faces by redirecting our attention to the entitlements and social security in particular. Social security is easy to fix, only courage is required. We need only tax social security to recoup it from higher income tax payers and move the age of retirement out (a similar strategy solves the problems of the enormous unfunded liabililties of state and local government pension plans).
Palin is not distracted, as Obama and the Congress seem to be, by worrying about the current $ 60 billion spat between House Republicans and the Obama White House. $ 60 billion isn't even two weeks of the current deficit at the federal level (not to mention the horrendous situation in state budgets). Palin was right when she referred to "death panels" in Obamacare and she is right to redirect our attention to social security and the health care entitlements.
Check out Paul Johnson's take on Sarah Palin in today's lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Palin, like Reagan and Thatcher before her, has had to to deal with the media hate mongers, but has maintained her focus and vision. If you want to see how the press treated Ronald Reagan, go to archives of the NY Times in the 1970s and you will read about Reagan characterized in essentially the same terms as Palin is today. Something about Sarah Palin's courage and forthrightness strikes a raw nerve with the left and with the most arrogant of the right (Peggy Noonan, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, etc.). America doesn't need more arrogance. What America needs is more people that are forthright about our debt situation, forthright about the need for free markets and less interested in demagoguery. In short, America needs more Sarah Palins.
