[nathanbedford]

But how could Thompson get different results from Bush?

He cannot. And that's why it is the wrong issue. The right issue is something along the lines Gingrich has articulated: how do we give your children the best chance to compete with the Chinese and to survive the hundred years war of Islamic fundamentalism?

That means we must reform energy, education, trade imbalance, and, yes, entitlements but that works only in the context of national survival.

Our standard bearer must fashion an overarching policy that nationalizes the whole election and seizes the mood of the country while applying conservative values to the solution. Anything less and we Republicans are doomed to defeat across-the-board. Entitlement reform alone is less.

[ken21]

your comment makes too much sense for most on this forum!

/s

[John Valentine]

Anything less and we Republicans are doomed to defeat across-the-board. Entitlement reform alone is less.

Jeez Louise.

Have you even been listening to ANYHING Fred Thompson has been saying?

Anything at all?

While entitlement reform is part of what he has on the agenda, it certainly isn't everything, and even then, Thompson has placed entitelment reform in EXACTLY the context you refer to and attribute to Newt Gingrich.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

But how could Thompson get different results [on privatizing Social Security] from Bush?

He cannot. And that's why it is the wrong issue.

The Social Security issue has to be addressed correctly, which means that you have to explain to everyone that the Social Security Trust "Fund" is an IOU that the government has written to itself. All very well to say that you will use it to help pay for Social Security when the cash flow of the program - payroll taxes less SS payouts - goes negative. But you must then explain where the Treasury gets the $$ to pay its debt to the SSTF. And the answer will be either tax revenue or printing press money - precisely as if the accounting fiction known as the SSTF did not even exist.

The cash flow of Social Security is projected to go negative at approximately the end of the next administration, if the next president gets reelected . . . and in succeeding administrations, the necessity to retire the debt of the SSTF will become The Monster That Ate California.

Social Security was "the third rail of American politics" until GWB touched it, and lived. No, he didn't accomplish any legislation - but for some time, children have been growing up with a sober realization of who is supposed to pay off the debt which is the SSTF.

SocSecurity has always played as, "Thank God Mother has Social Security so that I don't have to support her." But when the Ponzi scheme which is the SSTF comes home to roost, the issue will look a little bit different than that. Of course, at that point the Party of Big Journalism will flip the issue and berate the Republicans for "spending all the money in the SSTF." And you and I will scratch our heads and remark on how there seems to be nothing some people won't believe.