The Other McCain

by Smitty

The mighty Iowahawk:
The Politico link has some follow-up:

Kay Henderson has more on this, emphasis mine:

Another reporter pressed the issue, asking if Perry believes Medicare is “unconstitutional” as well.

“I never said it was unconstitutional,” Perry said. “I look at Medicare just like I look at Social Security. They’re programs that aren’t working and we ought to have a national conversation about it. You know, those that have said I’ve said they’re unconstitutional — I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said.”

In his book, Perry called Social Security something akin to a “bad disease” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

The whole episode underscores how difficult “Fed Up!,” which strongly favors states’ rights and is getting picked over by reporters and opposition researchers alike, will be for Perry to explain on the trail.

Discussions of major changes to Social Security are alarming to seniors, and while there hasn’t yet been public polling data on how the “Ponzi scheme” point plays in Florida, there likely will be.

For Perry, saying a version of “that’s not what I said” is unlikely to do the trick.

I’ll grant our over-reaching federal government this much nuance: these leech-like socialist programs are legal, insofar as legislation was excreted, signed into law, and has passed SCOTUS muster when brought up for review.

Past that, it’s long since time that we call the bluff on the Ruling Class cretins. The unicorn math doesn’t work outside the Beltway. The more Perry tells the truth, the more he paves the way for truth to leak into the settling pond of our current political discourse. (Readers who have been to Kandahar know what I mean.)

This blog strongly approves of any candidates with the guts to call ‘nonsense’ on the steaming pile of unsustainable crap comprised of our federal entitlement programs.

The interesting question raised by the Politico article is whether the Boomers are sufficiently enslaved by entitlements. Are they indoctrinated into beliefs about ‘rights’ to Social Security and Medicare that have become velvet handcuffs over time, so that the Boomers can be manipulated into turning against a candidate like a Perry, or a Cain, or a Santorum, who has the courage to speak the truth? I wish that ideas of liberty and American Exceptionalism were sufficiently strong to make that a silly question, but they are not.

O’Rourke famously noted that 2010 was not an election; it was a restraining order. 2012, therefore, will be liberty on trial, prosecuted by a Progressive werewolf in bespoke and Gucchis. Will conservatives rally around a McCotter, or even Palin? Or will they be deceived and support Romney, whose hair is perfect?