Sarah Palin Rips Health Care Bill And Reprises Death Panels Claim

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accused Democratic leaders of trying to “ram” the health care bill through Congress over the weekend and said voters should “look closely” because death panels remain in the legislation.

Palin took to Facebook a few hours after the late-night vote to tell her nearly 1 million supporters the bill was “disastrous” for the economy but they should “hold on to hope.”

“We’ve got to hold on to hope, and we’ve got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country,” Palin wrote. “The same government leaders that got us into the mortgage business and the car business are now getting us into the health care business.”

Palin, who used her Facebook feed to further the phony death panel meme earlier this year, brought it up again:

We had been told there were no “death panels” in the bill either. But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care.

Palin took specific aim at Speaker Nancy Pelosi for holding a late night vote, even though that’s been standard Congressional practice under both parties’ control.

“Why did she push the 2,000 page bill this weekend? Was she perhaps afraid to give her peers and the constituents for whom she works the chance to actually read this monstrous bill carefully, if at all?” Palin asked. “Was she concerned that Americans might really digest the details of a bill that the Wall Street Journal has called “the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced”?”

Palin closed with a threat for the midterm Congressional elections: “Our legislators can listen now, or they can hear us in 2010. It’s their choice.”

TPMDC found last week while covering the Capitol Hill Tea Party that Palin was one of the favorites of the 2012 GOP hopefuls.

Several tea partiers said they only voted for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) last year because Palin was on the ticket.

“I voted for the chick,” said Mike Alfred of Columbus, Ohio. “It was a cautious choice of McCain, I really voted for Sarah Palin.”

Christi Becker, a freelance artist from a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb, told TPMDC she considered McCain a “Republican in Name Only” and “supported Sarah Palin” on last year’s presidential ballot.

One of the signs we spotted at the tea party: “Read my lipstick: No more debt.”

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