A reader writes:

Look, the Democrats put forward a 12-year-old, not because he could best deliver the message, but because they considered him a compelling messenger. In effect, they said that the messenger is the message. At that moment, discussion of the messenger is perfectly appropriate.
No one is saying Graeme Frost isn’t a good kid, or that his family are bad people. What we are saying is that conservatives want to incent middle-class families, of which his is certainly one, to buy private health insurance, or seek employment where it is available. No one is criticizing the Frost’s in any way — oddly, no one seems to notice the fact that they did just fine under the pre-expansion SCHIP, and that President Bush proposes to expand further the program that already benefitted them.
But it is not the case that his family did not have the wherewithal to obtain health insurance. They simply made a series of choices — as to employment and as to allocation of resources — that resulted in them not having it at the time they needed it. The question is whether we would choose others to do the same.
As a parent, I sympathize with the Frosts for the suffering of their children, and I hope both children recover fully and have good lives. Nonetheless, I would have hoped that their hardship would have taught them to always put taking care of their children — including insuring them — first. Instead, it seems to have taught them to advocate for having government do it for them.

Powerline has more on E J Dionne’s “Meanies” column and the infantilization of politics.

(PS I’m not sure I entirely approve of ”incent” – or even “incentivize” – but I’m a foreigner, so American isn’t my first language)