Moving the Window
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)
Mitt Romney is charging hard after Rick Perry for Perry’s hardline stance that Social Security is an unsustainable ponzi scheme (unlike, say, endless wars unpaid-for wars):
“PERRY DOES NOT BELIEVE SOCIAL SECURITY SHOULD EXIST,” read the headline of Romney’s press release.
Romney adviser Stuart Stevens emails:
He has lost. No federal candidate has ever won on the Perry program to kill Social Security. Never has. never will.
As I said before, I really do believe that this sort of thing will doom Rick Perry and that Rommney will take the nomination.
If I’m wrong, it will be confirmation that the GOP base has gone over the deep end, and that we are in an existential fight for our country that “bipartisanship” and “compromise” are hopeless to fix. A world, in fact, where those pushing bipartisan compromise are as destructive as any Republican, and where Churchills are needed more than Chamberlains.
But even if I’m right and Romney takes the nod, Perry’s campaign will have succeeded in making the complete destruction of social security a legitimate arguing point in the national discourse. Should Obama win in 2012, the Republican debate will start from the notion that Perry’s view is an acceptable point worth debating, with more and more of the field nodding in agreement with him.
This is a big part of how conservatives win the day: by pushing from the extreme edges, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, but always and ever pushing. That is how the “sane” GOP candidate can come out with a radically corporatist economic plan that would change America forever while poking China directly in the eye, and it scarcely raises an eyebrow.
I have yet to see any moderate compromise-friendly Democrat effectively deny that conservative push the envelope successfully in this way. They simply argue that the GOP ultimately discredits itself with the America voter by doing this.
The last 30 years should persuade any honest student of politics that particularly in our binary political system, there is no consequence for extremism. The GOP will move farther and farther to the right while Democrats vainly strive for whatever “the middle” happens to be at the moment, even as “the middle” shifts farther and farther to the right. And the GOP will pay no permanent electoral price for doing this, even though they may lose an election here or there in the short term.
Democrats may cheer this little battle between Perry and Romney. But ultimately, it’s great for the conservatives who want to kill Social Security, and just the next step in the Overton Window-pushing electoral process that they’ll need to get there. And that’s true no matter which of the two extremists gets the GOP nod.
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