I think that he is largely right in this reading of the numbers. But let us be mindful of what is occurring here: His thesis says that the seniors are abandoning the Democrat party because the party which had given them Social Security under Roosevelt and had given them Medicare under Lyndon Johnson now threatens to take away the rice bowl. In effect, the parties have swapped positions. The Democrats are looking like Scrooge and the Republicans appear to be defending the right of seniors to keep their entitlement.
This is essentially an anomalous situation that will not long obtain. Either the Democrats will wise up and find a way between now and November 2010 to posture as the great entitlement givers or they will find a way, as they have every election cycle, to libel the Republicans as satanic princes who would take away their Social Security.
It is really by accident of overreaching and incompetence that the Democrats found themselves on the wrong end of this issue. But, for the Republican to continue to to profit from the issue, they must find a way of taking credit for defending an entitlement which many of us feel is unconstitutional and wrongheaded. This dilemma is personified in the figure of Mitt Romney who is taking flak from the Republican right because he created in Massachusetts an entitlement which they allege spends too much. Can the same Republicans be heard to say in the next breath that they are supporting senior citizens entitlement to healthcare?
The analogy is to a pole reversal in the Earth's magnetic field. Sooner or later the Democrats will find a way to give away more money to more interest groups which require Republicans to stand athwart the gravy train tracks shouting, "stop."
I believe the key to avoiding this trap perennially laid on by liberals to make conservatives look mean is to continue to pound on the issue of liberty. Republicans are defending the right to die in dignity with every right to an equal portion of the commonweal's assets devoted to their care. The Democrats find themselves in the position, unaccountably, in which they put on the green eye shades and insidiously deprive one class, the elderly, of equal share of society's assets to favor another class. That is the issue for us.
