There’s something being planned by Democrats, which you in America need to know about. They are scheming to gut the Medicare system so many of the neediest of this great nation depend on so greatly our honored elderly.
I’d have thought that the debate on caring for the elderly in this nation after their long service to the country would have been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we’ve just experienced. I’d have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to force everyone to rely on savings and investments for the care of their health during the golden years of retirement.
Certainly there are many of the mostly wealthy who do not need to rely on Medicare to survive, but what about the others, who fall through the cracks? Do the Democrats not understand the need for them to get the aid they want? We cannot allow this to happen, and as far as I have the power to stop it, it will not happen, not while I vote.
What’s that, you say? That’s scaremongering? That’s a dirty trick to terrify poor and elderly voters into voting against Democrats? Well, you’re absolutely right; it is. My efforts are just as crass and deliberate a political tactic as President Obama used recently in a weekly speech about the Republican Party. I even used most of his own words as reported by Michael D. Shear and Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post:
“I’d have thought that debate would’ve been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we’ve just experienced,” Obama said of privatizing Social Security. “I’d have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street.”
Even the left-leaning Post had to admit that this was simply a political stunt:
The specter of a threat to the program that provides retirement income to senior citizens is a preview of an attack that Democrats intend to make this fall, as they hope to blunt what appears to be a Republican surge in congressional elections.
This isn’t even being considered by the Republican Party at this point, nor was the Bush plan ever to turn over the entire Social Security retirement money into private investment accounts. The few Republican candidates who are even discussing Social Security are doing so in terms of eventual phase out, such as Sharron Angle. No one is arguing what President Obama says. In short, he’s getting straw all over the place as he attacks a “straw man;” an argument your opponent isn’t even making.
The big difference here, of course, between my introduction and the speech by President Obama is… my warning is true. The Democrats in congress and President Obama did pass legislation to gut Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars. What I left out is that this was done because the intent is for the Government Health Insurance Takeover Act (my name for Obamacare) to replace that coverage, but also it was a stunt to make the bill seem to cost less than it really will. When the time comes, most believe it highly unlikely that these cuts to Medicare will ever actually happen. Even if it does happen, it won’t be until 2014, four years from now.
The point is that if your purpose is to terrify people and convince them your opposition are ogres so they should vote for you instead, its easy to do; easy, but usually completely false. Yet what else do the Democrats have to run on lately? Gigantic deficits, massive debt, program after program passed in direct opposition to the bulk of America’s wishes, and a recession that just doesn’t ever seem to go away? So they run to the old playbook and demonize Republicans.
This time, I am not so sure it will work.
