Sarah the Shieldmaiden Slays the Straw Men

Barack Obama  got a wake up call last night. It came in the form of an editorial appearing in The Wall Street Journal written by Sarah Palin. On the eve of Obama's "high-risk" speech before a joint session of Congress, Palin takes the health care fight to the source and slays a few straw-stuffed monsters in the process.

Obama loves to trot out this straw man, "But to those who simply criticize without offering new ideas of their own, I have to ask: What’s your answer?" Palin offers a few:

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. 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.

Obama made the following remarkable statement in July at a fundraiser for John Corzine: "When it comes to these issues, the naysayers seem to think that we can somehow just keep on doing what we've been doing and expect a different outcome." Palin argues Obama's big government solution to health care is exactly that, doing more of the same and somehow expecting a different outcome:

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.

It is remarkable that the same President who once said, "So if anyone out there is waiting for government to solve all their problems, they're going to be disappointed," proposes a solution to health care that tells us more government involvement in the sector that constitutes 1/6th of our economy will solve all our problems.

As Palin points out, "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." The Democrats' proposals create a monstrously bloated government solution that will stand between doctors and their patients. It is a fire-breathing bureaucratic monster that once created, will be stopped by no living man. But no living man was she, declared Sarah the Shieldmaiden as she confronted the One who threatens to unleash monstrous legislation to stand between her and her "lord and kin."