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February 03, 2005

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

Comments

Here's a start:

http://www.conservativefriends.com/viewtopic.php?t=1034

Posted by: Drew on February 3, 2005 03:40 PM

They show no shame because they know that the MSM will never hold a Democrat accountable for hypocracy and they are still too ignorant to realise the damage the blogsphere is doing by never forgeting a single statement made by anyone.

Posted by: Dacotti on February 3, 2005 03:41 PM

this link was on Instapundit today, touches on a few of the numerous comments the dems made back when they considered SS in crisis

http://mytwocommoncents.blogspot.com/2005/02/msm-social-security-sotu-coverage.html

Posted by: johnnyh on February 3, 2005 03:41 PM

I'll try. This is something I found posted after finding at the Scrivener about a liberal economist calling SS a Ponzi Scheme.

Linked through my name as the comments section doesn't seem to want hyperlinks. Technical problem or my incompetence?

Posted by: Birkel on February 3, 2005 03:54 PM

Technical. It's on and off sporadically.

Posted by: fat kid on February 3, 2005 03:56 PM

(loose shit)

Posted by: fat kid on February 3, 2005 03:56 PM

The Democrats obstruct at their own peril. Tackling Social Security this year was a brilliant win-win for Bush.

If he gets everything he wants he comes out the winner for saving Social Security and taking it away from the Democrats as their pet issue.

On the other hand, if the Democrats succeed in blocking SS reform through fillibusters then they hand the Republicans a great campaign issue for the 2006 midterms. Namely, that the Democrats don't care about fixing Social Security. Look for more big losses by the Democrats in the House and Senate then.

If the Democrats come to the table and a compromise is reached then Bush gets the credit for grabbing the third rail of American Politics with both hands and surviving.

The GOP is well organized, you may not see the MSM deal with the Democratic Flip Flops, but I would look out for the GOP.

I expect the GOP to reuse the technique they used against John Kerry with the flip flop video distributed over the Internet. Don't be surprised if a video doesn't come out showing prominent Democrats talking about a Social Security crisis and then saying crisis what crisis?

Posted by: Eric on February 3, 2005 04:00 PM

Ace, how long have you been sick? This has been done (the instalink) and I took something from a Byron York piece a couple of weeks ago that showed illustrated the same thing:
http://wardrobedoor.blogspot.com/2005/01/game-of-who-said-that.html

Posted by: Aaron on February 3, 2005 04:06 PM

RE: Roundup, The GOP did it too...
http://www.gop.com/RNCResearch/Read.aspx?ID=5087

Posted by: LuluJean on February 3, 2005 04:48 PM

Democrats wanted to "save s.s. first" when the GOP wanted to cut taxes in the late 90's. Now they claim there is no crisis when Republicans want to partially privatize the program. What's the underlying consistency? Democrats ALWAYS fight the diversion of money and power away from the federal government.

Posted by: Golden Boy on February 3, 2005 05:07 PM

ACE - Their foolish inconsistency is evident to many and that number is growing every day. When we eventually get organized to boycott, a tsunami of truth shall wash them away when.
THE RIGHT MUST BOYCOTT!!!

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on February 4, 2005 01:06 PM