The Flip-Flopping Party

Well, first the Democratic Party developed an extreme case of collective amnesia regarding their prior declarations about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Now they seem to have come down with another bout of forgetfulness. Anyone who watched the commentary or Democratic response yesterday now knows that the Democrats are taking their talking points directly from Paul Krugman -- and Lord knows, that's scary in itself.

And their new mantra is that there is no crisis in Social Security.

Despite the fact that they've been talking about just such a crisis for going on twenty years now.

Ace's Assignment Desk: Someone with Lexis/Nexis and some free time should compile various statements from leading Democrats calling the Social Security insolvency problem a "crisis," at least before it became politically expedient to deny that characterization.

Not that it will help, of course. We did this for two years with their statements on WMD and they showed absolutely no embarassment whatsoever about simply disowning previously announced statements. And the media showed no interest in probing their sudden changes of heart.

A Start: My Two Common Cents notes that the NYT and WP sounded much different notes when Clinton proposed "saving" Social Security than they do when Bush suggests the same.

Q and O rounds up a lot of quotes from Clinton advisors and Clinton himself using the word "crisis."

Where oh where did the "crisis" go? It seems that in 1999 we were facing "the evident financial crisis which will be imposed on Social Security when the baby boomers retire," according to President Clinton, but nowadays Clinton-fanista Paul Krugman writes confidently:

"Today let's focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis. That claim is simply false."

Thanks, Q and O. You've done a man's job.

More... My super-secret government conact "Deep Stoat" sends along this PDF of Democrats flip-flopping on the Social Security crisis.

Or "non-crisis, perfectly managable glitch" as they now prefer to term it.

posted by Ace at 03:19 PM

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