Taking Reagan out of context and other Palinisms

In her closing remarks of Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan who once warned that if Americans weren't vigilant they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”

Does anyone recall what Reagan was referring to when he uttered those words? Was it the communist threat from Russia? Was it terrorists? Was it South American insurgents? No, what he was ranting about was Medicare. Historian Robert Dallek recently reminded us that Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ "

It would be interesting to know if Ms. Palin agrees with this stupid notion or whether she was once again babbling words that had absolutely no meaning or context as when she said: "Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”

It's no wonder that Joe Biden often turned to moderator Gwen Ifill and say: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.” Yeah, it's difficult to know where to start when you are debating someone who is nothing but punctuation.

My all-time favorite Palin line, however, came during a recent appearance in an airplane hangar in Youngstown, Ohio, when she said how happy she was to be there because her homestate of Alaska has, per capita, the nation's most "small planes and small pilots."

There has been a lot of criticism of the fact that during the debate she said she felt the vice president was a member of both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. I, too, think she said that although her exact quote was “Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position.”

Got that?