Posts Tagged ‘health care’
The Reagan Library Debate
Sep8
By John Feehery
Rick Perry walked into an ambush at the Reagan Library last night, as he took hits on his record, on his rhetoric, and on his philosophy. John Huntsman revived his campaign with a sparkling performance. Newt Gingrich took on the role of Spiro Agnew by once again attacking the media for asking questions about the differences between the candidates (which I thought was the purpose of the debate). Michelle Bachmann joined Herman Cain in the irrelevance caucus. Rick Santorum scored a good hit against Perry, which eliminated his chance to be named to the ticket by the Big Texan. Ron Paul went where no Republican has gone before on the libertarian scale.
And Mitt Romney won the debate.
The line of the night was Perry’s Ponzi scheme claim, an utterance that will live in infamy in 30-second commercials from every anti-Perry organization on the planet for the next six months.
The second best line came from Romney: “I don’t want to eliminate Social Security. I want to save it.”
If this primary choice comes to that one debating point, Perry is finished. Old people vote in Republican primaries and they like Social Security. Even most Tea Party Republicans want Social Security to stick around for a while. In fact, most Tea Partiers believe that Social Security is not a government program at all, but a savings account that they have already paid into (with interest).
It reminds me of the sign seen at one of the big rallies: “Keep the government’s hands off of my Medicare.”
Romney looked pretty strong. He didn’t come off as smart as Huntsman, who must be kicking himself right now for hiring Jon Weaver. Weaver is not a big fan of the modern Republican Party as it currently stands, and he lets his disdain of the party faithfully shine through all too often. That means he has positioned Huntsman to be the moderate at the Tea Party, a truth-teller, a lecturer, a “leader”. Well, you can’t be a leader without followers.
Weaver helped fire-up John McCain through many years of the Arizona Senator’s many attacks on the Republican establishment. That is all well and good, as long as you attack from the right, but attacking from the center makes it awfully hard to eventually lead the flock.
Romney took some effective shots at Perry, defended his Massachusetts record ably, and mostly allowed the moderators and the other candidates to do his dirty work for him. It was an effective strategy and it delivered Romney the victory.
Romney was the winner, Hunstman a close second. Everybody else lost. Perry got kneecapped. Bachmann started her fade. The rest didn’t make much of an impact, except for Newt, who showed once again how much he hates the media.
Scaring Seniors Backfires
Aug3
By John Feehery
The President turns 50 tomorrow, which is a big deal, especially to the President’s fundraisers, who are doing their best to milk it for all it is worth. Apparently, they are throwing a big bash for him in my hometown of Chicago. My invitation must have got caught up in my spam filter.
50 isn’t nearly as old as it used to be (especially if you are 47, like a blogger I know pretty well), and to many old-timers who depend on Social Security and Medicare to survive, 50 is pretty darn young.
I was talking to a neighbor of mine who happens to be a big Democratic activist, and he told me about how panicked his 84-year old mother was over the possibility that she wasn’t going to get her Social Security check.
She comes from a generation where they listen closely to their political leaders, and when the President says that Social Security checks may not be delivered because America can’t pay its debt, that generation takes those threats seriously.
Barack Obama didn’t fare well in the last election among senior citizens. It was by far his worst demographic showing. They didn’t like his “progressive positions” on social issues, they didn’t like his strange sounding name, they didn’t like his support of gay rights, and well, they just didn’t like him as much as other voters did. This, of course, is a vast overgeneralization, but the fact remains that Obama didn’t win senior citizens in 2008.
If these older voters didn’t like him then, they certainly like him a lot less now.
Just as Obamacare’s Medicare cuts were one of the drivers in the last election, I predict that the President’s rhetoric on Social Security checks will haunt him in the next campaign.
The President made this bold prediction two weeks ago in a national address: “If we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills — bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”
That is called scaring seniors.
While I haven’t been able to find the cross-tabs on why President Obama’s approval ratings have fallen to an all-time low, my guess is that the bottom has completely dropped out for him with seniors. You can’t go around threatening seniors that they won’t get their Social Security checks. Senior citizens don’t like such threats, they don’t respond well to them, and they get easily fed up with political posturing.
At the end of the day, Social Security checks went out, like they always do, as the debt crisis was averted. But that doesn’t mean that the seniors among us have forgotten what Mr. Obama said nor is it likely that they will forgive him.
