Bushwacking Obama: Conservatives Call for "Fixing" Social Security

Robert L. Borosage
HuffPost

Beware of conservatives bearing gifts. Today in the Washington Post, former Bush policy advisor Michael Gerson echoes a growing chorus of conservative pundits in offering up "Social Security reform" as "the answer to Obama's problems." The advice is illogical on its face, pernicious in its consequence, and poisoned from its source.

Gerson argues that Obama faces a major strategic decision in his coming State of the Union address, which must take the "first cut at the reelection message he carries to reelection or defeat." Gerson helpfully offers a course virtually guaranteed to increase the chances of the latter.

He predicts the president will focus on a multi-year discretionary spending freeze, and on banning earmarks. But, in a classic Republican negotiating stance, he dismisses this embrace of conservative policies as meaningless, since Republicans will trump anything the president suggests on spending cuts.

(More here.)