Inside the Beltway

You betcha

Is Sarah Palin’s foray into social media worth the read? Surely there is some clever ghostwriter penning her missives on Facebook, which is monitored by the press and picked apart by fact checkers on gaffe patrol.

Well, go ahead. Read. Enjoy. Mrs. Palin really writes her own entries, and she’s sincere about them.

“I’ll use Facebook to remind Americans that I’m hearing them. They’re coming up to me, and they’re whispering to me or they shout it loudly, and they say, ‘We’ve got to get this country back on the right track,’” she told Fox News.

“Yes, those are my messages. And I just want to let the American people know what was going through my mind. And I hear you. I’m there with you. I want to do something,” Mrs. Palin added.

Double trouble

Stupefying amounts of money and extreme drama can turn political process to chaos. After months of debate and obfuscation over health care reform, who knows which end is up? Who knows what the meaning of “is” is? At this point, the Democratic Party is petrified that the bill could fail. But Democrats are also woozy over the idea that the bill could pass as well.

“Democrats so fear the consequences of failing to pass Obamacare that they’ve convinced themselves that embracing $370 billion worth of tax increases and more than $400 billion worth of Medicare cuts is good for them,” says the National Review’s Rich Lowry. “This will long make for a compelling case study in the Annals of Abnormal Political Psychology.”

The fiscal pain of a $1 trillion deficit may not guarantee fiscal gain.

“If Democrats can’t afford failure on this course, what makes them think they can afford success? They created a hellish dilemma for themselves by refusing to scale back their bill once it became persistently unpopular,” Mr. Lowry continues. “Take half a loaf, disarm your critics, call it victory. How complicated is that? As President Ronald Reagan said, ‘There are simple answers, just not easy ones.’ And it wouldn’t have been easy to wean the Democratic core from its perfervid dream of nationalized health care.”

His advice?

“If President Obama meant his major promises about health care, he’d start over,” Mr. Lowry notes. “When they elected Obama, most voters wanted competence, bipartisanship, sobriety, and responsibility. On health care he’s 04, but the only option the Democrats have is to keep going. In fear of death, they’ll risk suicide.”

Byrd watching

C-SPAN got all Hollywood over the moment, and there was gushy applause in the press as Sen. Robert Byrd ascended into a congressional pantheon of sorts. The West Virginia Democrat recently became the longest-serving lawmaker on Capitol Hill, racking up over five decades on the job. He was a senator even before President Obama was born.

Time may fly when you’re having fun. But are you doing good?

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