I thought Romney did well last night, as did Perry (although expectations were higher for Perry). Newt was the star.
But, Romney’s post-debate performance by his messaging team was horrid, playing the “kill social security card” on Perry. We can quibble about whether the social security system has characteristics of a Ponzi scheme (aren’t all pay-as-you-go systems, in the sense of requiring future investors to pay prior investors, similar to a Ponzi scheme?). I don’t like using the phrase because it detracts from the message.
But whatever you say, it’s not fair to play scare tactics similar to what the Democrats do on Medicare. Perry isn’t going to kill social security under any interpretation of his remarks. Yet after the debate Romney’s team immediately claimed otherwise, as pointed out by John McCormack of the Weekly Standard:
Here’s the linked quote in the Tweet:
“The Republican Party has to defend the position of the nominee,” said top Romney adviser Stuart Stevens. “Every House candidate that runs, every Senate candidate that runs, would have to run on the Perry plan to kill Social Security.”
Challenging other candidates is both fine and good. But don’t regurgitate meaningless Democratic talking points and smears. Romney did fine during the debate, he should get control of his staff.
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I see little in Romney’s nature to believe his staff runs off at the mouth without his approval. I think it was a st@pid comment and will bite him hard. Maybe it reflects his desperation.
Prof Jacobson ….can you alert your readers that anyone headed into or through NorthEastern PA should stay home we have some very serious issues with flooding. They say it can be as bad as Agnes in 72, right now they have mandatory evacuations for 150.000 in Luzerne county …thats about half the county ….its bad and getting worse
If I alert people to floods in PA, Retire05 will get upset because I didn’t post about the Texas fires.
Professor, if you have the ability to help people avoid dangerous areas, then you should do so.
Just because I think you dropped the ball on the problems of Texans doesn’t mean that I think you should not help others avoid danger.
Retire05,cut the professor some slack.He reads Moonbattery and posts links. Moonbattery covered the Texas fire situation here: Sept.8,2011
“…As Texas Burns, Firefighting Aircraft Grounded by Feds
Here’s what the federal government is doing about the historic wildfires that have been devastating Texas — grounding firefighting aircraft:
Nearly half of the federal government’s firefighting air tankers are sitting idle at a California airport, grounded by the Obama administration in a contract dispute just weeks before wildfires swept through Texas killing a mother and her child, and destroying 100,000 acres. …
The U.S. Forest Service terminated the contract with Aero Union five weeks ago to operate seven P-3 Orions that are critical to the agency’s firefighting mission, leaving the federal government with 11 tankers under contract to help battle more than 50 large uncontained wildfires now burning nationwide.
That’s down from 40 tankers used by the Forest Service just a decade ago, according to Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Administration, who is challenging the decision to dismiss the largest provider of heavy air-tanker support to the federal government.
Again we see that the only areas in which our explosively expanding federal government shrinks are those few that pertain to its legitimate responsibilities.
Due to Obamunist “transparency,” the government isn’t saying why it abruptly canceled the contract right before the start of the fire season. We do know that Aero Union passed its annual inspection.
Eventually the grounded aircraft will be replaced by inferior planes that — like Comrade Obama’s Darth Vader buses — come from Canada. These require more downtime and carry a smaller load of fire retardant.
It’s tempting to blame this latest debacle on Obama’s war on red states (see here and here and here and here and here), but California will be hit too as the fire season heats up. Fortunately we don’t need to know the shadowy motives of the Obama Regime. We only need to know that it is urgent we get these people out of power as soon as possible….”
LOL …Sorry …who knew
As someone who has long endorsed killing old people, I can assure you that Perry’s plan does no such thing. Second look at Herman Cain?
Link to local paper
http://www.timesleader.com/
I dunno. Perry has had ample opportunity — including in the debate last night — to say he wants to fix SS since everyone knows it is headed for trouble, not kill it. He chose to stick with his overheated baloney about its being “by any measure a failure,” a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie.” I need not be a lefty to infer from all that that he would like to kill it. If not, he can open his mouth and say he wants to protect it but fix it.
I have no idea why he is riding this particular hobby horse. Maybe he thinks he can attract the five percent or so that Ron Paul gets in polls. People over 50 are far more likely to vote Republican than people under 30. They paid their FICA taxes for decades and whether or not they need it, they expect to draw Social Security.
Shikha Dalmia’s: Social Security is Not a Ponzi Scheme, Mr. Perry does a pretty good job of explaining this issue.
Hint: SS is worse that a Ponzi Scheme!
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Perry will have to come out with his clear plan to fix SS. But he is correct, SS IS a big lie. The “locked box” people think they pay into, like they would an IRA, is nothing of the sort. The funds are gone, replaced with IOU’s. The IOU’s run out in 2037 (supposedly), but the payments on those IOU’s comes from future taxes above and beyond current incoming SS taxes (they are taxes, not investments into a “trust”, as I understand it).
Perry seems to be putting himself in a better position to argue the Ryan plan (or whatever plan he has), than if he said we have till 2037 to fix it. It is already a current cash flow liability, and is only getting worse.
The Democrat Mediscare had Repub’s pushing grandma over the cliff. If fear works, people should know what to really fear, which requires using the “It’s a Big Lie” attack on many things .. a majority already KNOW our government lies to us, especially Obama.
Frankly, I enjoy seeing that Perry is not backtracking on the matter. We have had other Presidential candidates who used the word “fix”, yet SS remains the same and on a failure trajectory. Now that Perry is using the word “kill”, perhaps the vaunted “compromise” position is a real fix.
Professor — you are spot on. Romney lost the debate in the aftermath.
“We can quibble about whether the social security system has characteristics of a Ponzi scheme (aren’t all pay-as-you-go systems, in the sense of requiring future investors to pay prior investors, similar to a Ponzi scheme?).”
No, we can’t. It is a Ponzi Scheme, and so is every other “pay as you go” plan. That’s why all such plans are a bad idea. The initial idea behind SS was that everyone would be forced to pay (unless you worked for the government, in which case you could opt out), but most people would die before they could collect benefits, and get nothing. This failed for a couple of reasons, the main ones being growing life expectancies, and politicians seeing a big pool of money and deciding to spend it. SS is crap, and it should be killed.
Romney playing this game has moved him from my “like” column” to my “tolerate” column. In 2008 I went door to door for McCain (because of Palin). In 2012, I don’t think I’d go door to door from Romney.
Before you can convince the electorate that a program needs fixing, you must first convince them that the program is broken. I think Perry made some progress in that regard. The details of the fix can come later.