Agreed. We won’t beat obama without strong support from seniors. Very strong support. Higher than McCain or Bush got. Seniors were the only age group that voted for McCain over Obama 53-45. They were the only age group he did better with than Bush did in 2004. They were the age group that went the most for the GOP last fall(59%, largely because the GOP effectively portrayed Obama and the dems as threatening medicare). We’re going to need at least 55% of them in 2012, if not higher.
I don’t care how good your ideas are, how good your plans are. They won’t mean anything if Obama gets re-elected. So the #1 goal has to be the beat Obama.
Simple logic tells you we need to lay off medicare for the time being. Yes, Ryan’s plan has good ideas and it’s not as bad as the dems make it out to be. But the dems can easily demagogue it and the media will support them and it’s hard to respond to. Even when you watch Ryan he does it in the context of a long, detailed speech. But the dems have a simple 30 second ad that he wants to get rid of medicare. It’s just not good politics.
And the whole “it won’t affect current seniors or those over 55” just doesn’t work. It didn’t work when W tried it on Social Security and it won’t work now.
Medicaid is much more fertile ground. Seniors may actually vote GOP, and have in the past. They don’t like Obama. However, most of the poor and those on medicaid are already Dems are likely to vote for Obama. So, we don’t relaly lose anything by going after them. We do by going after seniors.
The good news is this happened early enough to serve as a warning and we can adapt. Obama and the dems got a similar warning in Jan 2010 with MA. They chose to ignore it. We all know what happened. Hopefully we won’t ignore this.
You make some good points here and I can't argue with you that Medicare reform looks like a giant loser right now, but our team is on record supporting it. All but 4 Republicans in the House voted for it, and I don't see how they run from that vote now.
Do you really think the Republican House members can escape their endorsement of Ryan's plan? I don't think so. It seems to me we may have to just stand our ground and fight over it. We are right, Medicare needs to be reformed. The public apparently isn't ready for it, but I don't think we can run and hide after overwhelmingly voting for the Medicare reform plan.
I agree with you Dave W, we are going to drive the Medicare bus full speed ahead until it goes right over the cliff.
I thought polling showed that seniors likes the Ryan plan
But do the seniors realize that Obamacare deeply cuts medicare and contains provisions to set up advisory boards that can curtail medical services for the elderly, who Obama says we can just send home with aspirin instead of a new hip? Of course not!