[Mb-civic] Young People: The Key To Republican Single-Party Rule

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Young People: The Key To Republican 
Single-Party Rule 
by Thom Hartmann 
Democrats and progressives make the mistake of thinking that today's 
Social Security debate is about Social Security. It's not. It's about 
creating single party rule for a generation or more. To do that, 
Republicans believe they need only to grab the hearts and minds of 
the generation currently under 30 - and they can do that, win or lose, 
by properly framing the Social Security debate. 
According to exit poll data from the Associated Press, under-30 voters 
were up more than nine percent in voter participation in 2004, bringing 
4.6 million new young people into the polls just since 2000. 
And, as Martha Irvine of the Associated Press noted in an article in 
USA Today the week after the 2004 election, "This time, young voters 
were the only group that favored Democrat Kerry. The AP's exit polls 
found that under-30s favored Kerry over Bush, 55% to 44%...." 
This was not lost on Republicans. As Irvine noted in her AP article, 
even safe-seat Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa 
designed an entire ad campaign "targeting young people." 
And many among this young demographic - the first generation in over 
200 years raised in schools largely unable to teach civics and 
American history both because of budget cuts and fear of claims of 
"liberal bias" from conservative fanatics - are politically naïve and ripe 
for the picking. 
Those under 30 don't remember - or, largely, even know - that the 
leading causes of death among the elderly, the widowed, and the 
disabled after the Republican stock market crash of 1929 included 
starvation and hypothermia. Before Roosevelt instituted Social Security 
in 1935, the majority of America's elderly lived in poverty. Today it's, 
but take away Social Security and today's elderly poverty rate would be 
47.6 percent. 
These are statistics that the Republicans and their corporate media will 
not be sharing with people under 30. 
Thus, as David King of Harvard's Institute of Politics told the AP's 
Irvine of the young vote: "I think that young people are there for the 
taking...." 
Stalin's year for the final consolidation of single-party rule in Russia 
was 1927, and that rule lasted over fifty years. American conservatives 
intend their year of final consolidation to be 2006, and are planning for 
a similar fifty-year horizon. 
So Republicans and their NLP expert Frank Luntz had to figure out 
what issue could bring young people into the fold. Gay bashing was 
out, as young people are the most gay-tolerant of all demographic 
groups. Ditto for other "social" issues like the death penalty, abortion, 
and government posting of "Thou shall have no other gods before me" 
at taxpayer expense. 
Similarly, young people weren't likely to easily fall for Republican spin 
on "Clear Skies" efforts to increase pollution, phony "science" denying 
global climate change, "Healthy Forests" giveaways to timber company 
contributors, and "free trade" policies that are hollowing out America's 
middle class. Cons may be able to spin these issues for the already-
"conservative" 30-55 "Reagan/Limbaugh demographic," but not for 
young people. 
And elderly Democrats - who still clearly remember how Roosevelt's 
policies lifted America out of Republican Herbert Hoover's Great 
Depression - are a group whose minds Republicans won't change, and 
who are dying off. 
Young people are where the political hay is to be made: Republicans 
believe they are the necessary key to single party rule. 
So the tacticians at the RNC developed an elaborate - and, so far, very 
successful - sleight of hand. They'd use a dubious Social Security 
"crisis" to convince young people that: 
1. Republicans want young people to get the best "return" on their 
"Social Security tax dollar investment." 
2. Democrats don't care about the interests of young people, but only 
want to pander to old people to get their votes. 
3. Selfish old people, their "special interest" lobby the AARP, and the 
Democrats they "own" will prevent young people from getting the 
"benefits" of the "free market." 
All of this, of course, ignores a series of realities: 
1. Social Security is an anti-poverty insurance program, not an 
investment program. A third of its payments don't even go to retirees 
but, instead, are distributed to - literally - widows, orphans, and people 
so crippled or disabled that they can't work. (And people who outlive 
actuarial averages often get more back than they paid in.) 
2. The "iceberg" Social Security will "hit" is based on very slow/low 
growth assumptions of the American economy (a continuation of the 
Bush recession for 75 years). But if the economy grows over the next 
75 years at exactly the same rate it has for the past 75 - even including 
the years of the Great Depression - there will be no Social Security 
shortfall whatsoever. 
3. The "high return" assumptions for private accounts assume the 
American economy will grow so fast that, if they're met, there would be 
no need for any Social Security reform whatsoever. 
4. Even if Social Security does run low on cash in 2042 or 2052 
(depending on which arm of Congress you're listening to), private 
accounts won't add a single penny to that cash-flow problem. In fact, 
the borrowing necessary to fund the first generation's private accounts 
will throw the system even further in the red. 
But the real Republican agenda here has little to do with Social 
Security. (Energizing "free market conservatives" like Greenspan, who 
have always thought of Social Security as socialism, is a bonus 
freebie, as is any payback to Wall Street for campaign donations.) It's 
really all about capturing the only demographic that voted as a block 
against Bush in 2004, to establish a future fifty years of Republican 
single-party rule. 
This is why it's so critical for Bush to carefully control who's allowed 
into his "conversations" about Social Security around the country. It's 
why the former Swift Boat folks are running such openly deceptive ads. 
It's why our tax dollars are illegally being used to push propaganda on 
young Americans about Social Security (propaganda that's even being 
repeated on youth-friendly venues like The Daily Show). And it's why 
otherwise rational and even usually honest Republicans are (although 
occasionally only mildly) "supporting the President" on this issue. 
And, most important, it's why Bush won't put forward a program to 
"solve" the funding problems that Social Security may or may not face 
30 or 40 years from now, but instead simply talks about the "problem," 
and how he wants "young people" to get a "better return" and have 
"greater control" over their Social Security "investment." It's why he 
most likely will never put forth a comprehensive program: It'll 
conveniently be declared "dead in the water" because of "Democratic 
opposition" even before it comes out. 
And, thus, "win or lose," Bush and the Republicans will psychologically 
win big with the under-30 demographic. 
In fact, studies show Republicans may have already accomplished 
much of their goal. Even though there is no official "Bush plan" for 
Social Security, USA Today reported on February 16, 2005: "Support 
for Bush's plan is highest among the under-30 crowd, the only age 
group in which backers outnumber doubters." 
Republicans will say - over and over - that they valiantly tried to help 
young people get a better "return" on their taxes, but the Democrats 
and those terrible old people prevented them. They'll say they tried to 
solve a "crisis" and a "problem," and "reform" an "antiquated" Social 
Security system, but were outmaneuvered by evil Democrats, 
"liberals," and greedy old people. The Right Wing Noise Machine (so 
well documented by David Brock) will repeat this mantra so hard and 
so often that today's young people will be able to recite it from memory 
for the next fifty years. 
Divide and conquer has been the slogan of the Bush dynasty ever 
since Poppy first used television advertising to mentally merge Michael 
Dukakis with a black killer, pitting whites against blacks in America. It 
worked then, and Republicans are betting that pitting young people 
against the elderly will work just as magically now. 
Since the rise of Coors' and Scaife's Heritage Foundation, Rev. Moon's 
Washington Times, Newt and his Machiavelli Frank Luntz, Murdoch's 
Fox News, and Lee Atwater's Reagan/Bush "perpetual campaign," 
Republicans have been playing chess, planning a dozen moves and 
three to four election cycles ahead. They plan to win big among under-
30's in their long-term electoral chess game, even as they set it up to 
appear to "lose" at short-term Social Security checkers. 
If they succeed - and they're already halfway there - single-party 
corporate/Republican rule could be a reality for the next generation 
and (especially if they maintain control of electronic voting machines) 
generations beyond. This outcome will foul our environment, further 
decimate our remaining middle class, and lead us into a brave new 
world of perpetual oil and religious wars, maintained by a brutal and 
intrusive corporate/police state. 
Progressive Democrats must immediately develop and implement a 
strategic, multi-step response to the Republican Social Security 
gambit, carefully targeted to the under-30 demographic, if Jefferson's 
Party and the Enlightenment ideals of our democracy are to survive. 
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored 
Award-winning best-selling author, NLP Trainer, and host of a 
nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. 
www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours 
of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The 
Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?" 


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   ---   George Orwell


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