It Must Suck To Need The Crazy Ones

On This Week, Jake Tapper asked Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah), who was correct, Sarah Palin (former Republican governor of Alaska) or Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). For those of you who have been striving to stay far, far, far away from politics, Palin claimed in a Facebook post that provisions in the current health-insurance reform law that allow for senior citizens to obtain counseling on end-of-life care amount to "Death Panels," where government officials will decide when someone is too old to have money spent on their health care. Murkowski strenuously disagreed.

Hatch waffled - refusing to support either side. In effect, he refused to go on the record either saying that a) he believed that Democrats were attempting to sneak what some people have characterized as euthanasia for cost savings into the bill, or b) that Governor Palin (intentionally or not) is spreading factually incorrect information. I understand he refusal to go to the mat for a). After all, it's rare that a United States Senator is politically unsavvy enough to publicly support something that's already been shown to be objectively false. But his refusal to concede that Palin was wrong demonstrates the position that Hatch understands himself to be in - so hard up for votes that if he has to leave the door open for people to think that he believes what is widely understood to be a paranoid delusion, he'll do it.

That's more than a whiff of desperation - it's an overpowering reek.