Personal Accounts Tank in Polls, GOP Says

[woosh]

From Yahoo news


WASHINGTON - The heart of President Bush (news - web sites)'s plan for Social Security (news - web sites), allowing younger workers to create personal accounts in exchange for a lower guaranteed government benefit, is among the least popular elements with the public, Republican pollsters told House GOP leaders Tuesday.


The pollsters also stressed the political stakes involved in pursuing Bush's plan to overhaul the Depression-era program, according to a memo circulated at a session in the Capitol.

Older voters consider a candidate's views on Social Security to be "as important, or in some cases, more important than issues like the war, health care and education," they wrote.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20050309/ap_on_go_pr_wh/social_security

[Arkana]

1. Well, at least they're admitting

that personal accounts are about as appealing as chlamydia. I would have expected them to lie about this, just like everything else.

[bunkerbuster1]

7. Those focus group sessions must've been BRUTAL

And for the reThugs to admit even as much as has been acknowledged via the spin in that article is telling.

Grab that third rail, reThugs! bzzzzzt! bzzzzzzzzzzt!

[wtmusic]

2. Bush's plan to "overhaul" the Depression-era program?

Lots of creative verbs being thrown about...I kinda like "dismember"

[skypilot]

3. Frank Luntz is probably working overtime...

...trying to craft more disingenuous language to make SS privatization seem appealing again. "Personal accounts" apparently isn't doing the trick.

[underpants]

5. There's mothing wrong with the message people just haven't

"been informed" on it yet. The math is very clear you know.

:eyes:

[Wright Patman]

4. What * ought to do

is go ahead and declare martial law, appoint himself dictator, abolish Social Security by executive decree and then let's see what happens.

You KNOW he'd do it if he thought he could. Laws and constitutions mean nothing to this vermin. He has never abided by any set of rules at any time in his life. Those are for "the little people" as Leona Helmsley used to say.

[soothsayer]

6. polls? he don't use no stinkin' polls. just spends more than $1m

annually on them

[AP]

8. To me this is evidence of how Kerry-Edwards campaign missed a big...

...opportunity.

Here you have almost NO honest anti-SS Reform information in the media, yet so many voters are so clued into their PERSONAL FINANCIAL SITUATION and their ANXIETY ABOUT REMAINING MIDDLE CLASS that their on a hairtrigger on this issue. With no help from anyone in the media or any politician really picking up the flag on this issue, voters from the ground up have charged forward and told Republicans to back the fuck up.

Last year the Democrats spent 250 million dollars trying to tell voters that we were reporting for duty to protect them from overseas threats and it didn't get them as close as Al Gore's ODB routine with Tipper.

It just seems to me that there is this undercurrent of how people are experiencing life in America that Democrats could really tap into, but they studiously ignore it.

[Mark E. Smith]

9. The Greatest Democrat Of All, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ...

... is reaching down from whatever blessed realm he now occupies to lay an ass whipping on that unworthiest of wretches currently stinking up his White House.

[lovuian]

10. Schwab Edward D Jones AG edwards and others removed support

from Bush's private accounts... their clients don't want anymore 401 or IRA Roths they want their social security!!!

[physioex]

11. Nothing to Celebrate....

I see lots of folks here celebtrating the issue, and I am just as glad as you to see support fall. However I wonder if this is just a distraction away from the larger problems we face?

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Remind the Electorate of Old Keating...

What anti-privateers OUGHT to do is remind voters of the shenanigans of such Republican-connected outfits like Arizona's Lincoln Savings and their foisting junk bonds off as being as secure as Cd's. Show the voters video of ruined depositors shouting at Republican Keating to "give them their money." Then ask the audience if they think that the Republicans can really be trusted.