Campaigning Like It's the End of the World.

On Sarah Palin's Graham alliance and end-times theology, from The Washington Independent:

Last week, Sarah Palin made a strange comment defending Israeli settlement construction by warning that “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” Since worldwide Jewry is unaware of such an imminent threat that would prompt mass immigration to Israel — and certainly not immigration specific to the West Bank – that sounded like some kind of dogwhistle to Christian Zionists, a cohort that promotes unconditional American support to Israel in order to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ to earth. Not, in other words, something particularly high on the Jewish or Israeli agendas, but Christian Zionists represent a pretty sizable bloc within the Republican coalition and could, say, help someone win a presidential nomination were someone so inclined.

Palin’s apparently eschatological comment doesn’t appear to be an accident. The Charlotte Observer reports that she’s taking dinnertime advice on Israel from the Graham family:

The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate told Billy Graham about how she came to faith in God as a girl in Bible camp.

She quizzed him on the presidents he’s known and wanted his take on what the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq, Franklin Graham reported.

The Rev. Billy Graham is a credit to this country, and has for all of his life eloquently melded evangelical Christianity with a civic-mindedness and a broadmindness that have appealed to people of all faiths and no faith. (Heapologized for an unfortunately antisemitic comment with President Nixon that was caught on tape and recently released.) Franklin Graham is a much different story. AChristian Zionist leader, Franklin has described Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion” and suggested erroneously that the Christian God and the Muslim God are two different deities. He even asked President Obama on the campaign trail if he was a Muslim. And unfortunately, Billy Graham is not long for this world, so if Palin is trying to yoke herself to the Grahams, then she’ll be palling around with Franklin more and more.

And the Earth is Flat Too: Sarah Palin and Death Panels.

From ThinkProgress, Sarah Palin keeps the "death panel" ball rolling by insisting that they are an aspect of the new health care bill.

During the summer’s debate over health care reform, right-wing activists and lawmakers latched onto former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s false claim that President Obama and congressional Democrats were proposing government “death panels” that would “pull the plug on grandma.” While Republican leaders largely abandoned this myth, Palin revived it on Friday during a speech at a Wisconsin Right to Life fundraising banquet. In her remarks, Palin “repeatedly suggested that liberal social policies could lead to de facto euthanasia.” The speech was closed to the press and audience members were not allowed to bring cell phones, cameras, or any recording devices, but a few reporters still managed to sneak in. Politico reports that Friday’s speech was less than inspiring:

Palin had remarks prepared but frequently wandered off-script to make a point, offering audience members a casual “awesome” or “bogus” in discussing otherwise weighty topics.

As in: “It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn’t strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live.”

Other Palin touchstones included: praise for the military, jeers for the “the liberal media” and a general manner of speaking that often veered into rhetorical culs-de-sac.

While she drew applause during her remarks, Palin’s extemporaneous and frequently discursive style was such that she never truly roused a true-believing crowd as passionate about the issue at hand as she. Not once during her address did they rise to their feet.

Palin warned on her Facebook page last night that the “death panel” provision is in the health care bill that just passed the House.