Tuesday, February 15, 2005

The Answer

Mark Schmidt is wondering where the Social Security privatization liberals are and, indirectly, why Bush doesn't seem to care about cultivating them and achieving some measure of a bipartisan consensus on reforming Social Security.

Here is my answer:

Bush only cares about Republican votes in the House and picking off a few scared, potentially vulnerable Democrats from Red States up for re-election in 2006 on the Senate side. The Rove-Norquist-Delay Strategy is intimidation, not cooperation. It worked for taxes, the war, and for establishing the union-broken Department of Homeland Security. But I don't think it will work for Social Security. Who knows, maybe it's not even intended to. From the Republican point of view, maybe it's enough that they've gotten this far with the debate.

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