Columnist: Palin wins debate on Obamacare 'death panels'

Thanks to massive public outcry spurred by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Senate committee is dropping the controversial "death panels" provision in the Obamacare bill. That's the language that would have required Americans to seek suicide counseling after they reach a certain age.

The left-wing media tried for weeks to discredit critics of Obama's "death panels," especially Gov. Palin, who is still No. 1 on the far left's hit list.

If Palin wasn't right, why did Obama and his minions drop the suicide counseling provision?

That's what columnist James Taranto wants to know.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Taranto says Palin clearly won the debate.

From his column:

The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.

A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.

President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly -- to audience laughter -- about "pulling the plug on grandma."

Read the full column at the newspaper's Web site.