Richard Cohen Accuses Palin

Of using overwrought and highly political language. He makes his point about the use of hysterical rhetoric by calling her the next Joe McCarthy. If people like Cohen didn't exist, you would have to make them up.

As with McCarthyism, Palinism is a product of its times. McCarthy exploited the public's fear of communism and communists. Not only were they abroad, but they were here in America -- spies, fellow travelers, pinkos, apologists, intellectuals and short, bespectacled minorities. It was their very ubiquity and invisibility that made them so dangerous. Health care reform provides Palin with the same opportunity.