March 4, 2005
MAKING HIS MIDNIGHT CREEP (via Tom Morin):
Bush Rejects Delay, Prepares Escalated Social Security Push (Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, March 3, 2005, Washington Post)
President Bush plans to intensify his campaign to win public and congressional support for restructuring Social Security, warning that it would be a bad idea to delay action as the Senate Republican leader has suggested and politically unwise for lawmakers to oppose private accounts, White House officials said yesterday.Despite polls showing support for the plan slipping, Bush is confident he is winning the first phase of the public debate over Social Security and has no plans to significantly alter his strategy for enacting the most dramatic changes ever to the venerable system, said senior White House officials who have talked to Bush. [...]
The "scope and scale goes way beyond anything we have done," said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who heads to Arkansas today. The president is also privately discussing compromises to win Democratic backing and is likely to signal his support for new protections for low-income workers under Social Security, GOP sources said.
Snow told reporters that Bush also has not ruled out embracing a plan backed by many Democrats to create government-subsidized personal savings accounts outside the existing system.
While Democrats guard the front, the President is sneaking in the back door. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2005 10:46 AM
Support going down? Yawn. We've seen this jig before on every single effort Bush has put forward. Polls always come out saying that support is slipping, more people are opposed to Bush, etc, etc, etc.
The message here is the most fervent wish of the messenger, the MSM, which consistently uses polls from their beginning (the questions asked and how they are asked) to finsh (the way the results are reported/interpreted) to say whatever they believe the public should say.
Don't they know by now that trying to use polls against Bush is utterly ineffective?
On the other hand, if it keeps them from finding better means to resist Bush...... let them keep massaging the polls.
Posted by: BC Monkey at March 4, 2005 11:50 AMWhen visiting Gettysburg recently, I overheard an instructive conversation at a checkout register. Somehow a 70+ old lady got into a discussion with the two ladies (ca. 20 years old and 40 years old) running the register.
Old lady declaims loudly "SS is a sacred trust--a COVENANT that the government made--They CANNOT change it!" (I guess she wasn't around when the tax law changed in 1986.)
The two other ladies (20&40) just rolled their eyes, and the 20YO said "It might be paying out to you, but when I'm your age there will be no money in SS for me."
The 20&40 folks will be voting for mush longer than the 70 YO's. The Dems have grabbed onto the wrong end of the stick.
Posted by: fred at March 4, 2005 1:19 PM