Palin Brings Back 'Death Panels' Smear -- Against The Deficit Commission!

Eric Kleefeld | December 10, 2010, 11:22AM

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R)

Sarah Palin is now getting on the conservative bandwagon to oppose the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan -- which of course, already failed to receive the approval of a supermajority of the commission itself. And along the way, she's bringing back her greatest hit from the health care debate: The Death Panels!

As Palin writes in a new guest column in theWall Street Journal:

Not only does it leave ObamaCare intact, but its proposals would lead to a public option being introduced by the backdoor, with the chairmen's report suggesting a second look at a government-run health-care program if costs continue to soar.

It also implicitly endorses the use of "death panel"-like rationing by way of the new Independent Payments Advisory Board--making bureaucrats, not medical professionals, the ultimate arbiters of what types of treatment will (and especially will not) be reimbursed under Medicare.

[TPM SLIDESHOW: Governor Sarah Palin: A Long Goodbye.]

As you'll recall, in August 2009 Palin accused Obama of wanting to set up government boards that could cut off all medical care for her baby Trig, who has Down Syndrome:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

The term "death panels" -- which even Palin put in quotes -- quickly entered the lexicon of the right wing.