Playbook of the Damnable

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall has a present for us: the Social Security phase-out strategy playbook congressional Republicans used at their retreat over the weekend.

I haven’t even read the whole document yet (it’s over 100 pages), but here are some choice excerpts I’ve come across already:

Don’t say, “Social Security lifts seniors out of poverty”: People don’t appreciate all that Social Security does, and believe that despite the program, many seniors are still in poverty. Instead, talk about how Social Security is a “floor of protection” that keep seniors out of the most dire circumstances. (p7)

Yeah, no shit people don’t appreciate all that Social Security does, starting with the GOP fuckwits that put together this entire retarded strategy.

The president says that "the crisis is now." That comment has inspired a lot of fairly tedious semantic debate. Let's just say that we have a serious problem. It is true that we do not have to fix it immediately. (p22)

Fairly tedious semantic debate. Or, as we liberals like to call it, talking about the motherfuckin’ truth.

Republicans, and Bush especially, face a daunting series of questions as they figure out how to move forward on Social Security. How much should they let people invest in personal accounts? Should it vary by income, so that poorer people can invest a higher percentage of their wages? (p23-24)

Once again, I am amazed at the lack of understanding the GOP has of the average working American. How are poorer people going to invest a higher percentage of their wages? We have private retirement accounts now—they’re called IRAs. Very few “poorer people” can fully take advantage of them as it is. Giving them the opportunity to put more money into private retirement accounts isn’t going to change their circumstances, their ability to invest more income. I have yet to meet a working stiff who complains about the restrictive cap on annual IRA investments. The day I hear, “Damn, I wish the government would allow me to put more of my money from my Wal-Mart salary into my IRA,” is the day I’ll support this horse’s ass of a plan.

Greater risk can produce greater reward, but it doesn't necessarily do so.

A study released last week by the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington found that 15 percent of retirees ages 64 to 74 lost half or more of their total wealth between 1992 and 2002, and 30 percent lost half or more of their financial wealth. On the other hand, more than half of the retirees sampled saw their total wealth rise by more than 50 percent during those years.

The study found that white men, married couples and the better educated did best at managing their wealth. (p32)

Just LOL. Just seriously…LOL.

The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away. (p33)

Yowza. Create fear and then lie to 'em—repeatedly and consistently. It's one thing to know they do it; it's quite another to see it put on paper.

Is there no Republican in Congress who reads something like that and has even the remotest twinge of contempt for such a strategy? No pang of guilt? Not even the faintest bad taste in the mouth? Unfrickinbelievable.

The same architects of Bush's political victories will be masterminding the new campaign, led by political strategists Karl Rove at the White House and Ken Mehlman at the Republican National Committee.

There’s a shocker. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, I would hope there’s a special place in it for each of those two Machiavellian knob-ends.

There’s more, oh so much more. I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry.