The Republican Wrong – Real Hypocrisy

Of all GOP supporters, you might think that none would be more principled than former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and especially on the subject of health care reform. After all, it was Palin that started the story about “death panels” which was then linked back to health care systems in the UK and Canada – the story which was voted the year’s biggest whopper by PolitiFact readers, but nevertheless gained traction at a key moment.

But now, Palin has admitted that, many years ago, she crossed the border into Canada to take advantage of a health care system that she spent so much of last year demonising. It’s good that she has come clean, but shows the way in which political expediency intrudes into the real world.

After all, when economic quack doctor extraordinary Milton Friedman suffered a heart attack in the early 1980s, he was taken to hospital courtesy of a free ambulance service. Following Friedman’s own dogma, that service should not have existed, being provided out of taxation rather than being the outcome of customer choice.

It’s a funny old world out there on the Right.