{"id":13319,"date":"2007-10-22T11:15:31","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T15:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13319.html"},"modified":"2007-10-22T11:15:31","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T15:15:31","slug":"gop-candidates-endorse-bushs-failed-social-security-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/gop-candidates-endorse-bushs-failed-social-security-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP candidates endorse Bush’s failed Social Security plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans in general have been struggling<\/a> lately with memory trouble, but I find it hard to imagine that the GOP presidential field has completely forgotten about 2005. It wasn’t that long ago.<\/p>\n

Shortly after his second inaugural, the president boasted of having “political capital,” which he intended to invest in privatizing Social Security. Bush figured this was his best shot — there was a Republican House, Republican Senate, and his approval rating was still above 50%. Everything was how Bush and his team wanted it.<\/p>\n

And then the president actually started talking about his ideas to privatize the Social Security system. The more Americans heard about the plan, the more they hated it. After a few months of hearing Bush barnstorm the nation to sell his idea, Americans supported his handling of Social Security even less<\/a> than his handling of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Bush’s overall poll numbers quickly collapsed, and never recovered. Even the most sycophantic of Republicans quickly realized that Bush’s Social Security policy was poison to be avoided at all costs. Given the public’s response, a candidate would have to be a blithering fool to embrace a plan that everyone hated.<\/p>\n

And yet, there was the Republican field last night<\/a>, pretending that 2005 never happened, and vowing to pick up where Bush left off on Social Security.<\/p>\n

If there’s any logic to this, it’s hiding well.
\n
\nFred Thompson got things started, arguing (falsely) that Social Security is going “bankrupt,” and proposing steep benefit cuts to protect the system.<\/p>\n

Practically every other candidate recommended Bush’s approach to the issue.<\/p>\n

* Rudy Giuliani: “OK. I think the reality is that we have to deal with Social Security. The first thing we have to do is get a consensus behind private accounts if we’re going to change it.”<\/p>\n

* Mitt Romney: “[T]he president said let’s have private accounts and take that surplus money that’s being gathered now in Social Security and put that into private accounts. That works.” Asked how he would succeed where Bush failed, Romney added, “Well, you know, I will learn from his experience and from my own.”<\/p>\n

* Mike Huckabee: “The president had the right idea, but he used the wrong word. When he used the word privatization, it scared the daylights out of a lot of people because…they’re thinking Enron and WorldCom, and that that’s where their money would go. The right word is ‘personalization.’ Empower individuals to have a greater say over their money.” (Yes, to Huckabee, Bush’s scheme would have worked, were it not for semantics.)<\/p>\n

* Ron Paul: “[W]e need to allow the young people to just flat out get out of the system. Because, I tell you what, if you have the government managing these accounts, it’s not going to work.”<\/p>\n

* John McCain: “[Y]ou have to got to the American people and say we don’t — we won’t raise your taxes. We need personal savings accounts, but we got to fix this system.”<\/p>\n

So, most of the Republican candidates believe they can win the presidency, on a platform that includes promising to follow Bush’s model on Social Security.<\/p>\n

Sounds good to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans in general have been struggling lately with memory trouble, but I find it hard to imagine that the GOP presidential field has completely forgotten about 2005. It wasn’t that long ago. Shortly after his second inaugural, the president boasted of having “political capital,” which he intended to invest in privatizing Social Security. Bush figured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}