Republicans to Debate (Again, sigh) in Florida – Social Security To Take Center Stage

Is Sarah Palin More Articulate Than Rick Perry on the Issue?

In either a crafty move of brilliant intelligence, or a political gaffe of monumental importance, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has injected the issue of the long term solvency of Social Security into the Republican Presidential contest.  As The Dismal Political Economist has pointed out, this is a real loser of a topic, because it forces candidates to address and propose proposals for Social Security, something no one wants to do.

The Texas Governor has called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme” and his opponents have seized upon the comment to position themselves as the saviors of Social Security and Mr. Perry as one who would destroy it.  Coming to the aid of Mr. Perry was former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who said this



World Capital Markets - Can They Fix Social Security?
Sarah Palin Says They Can



"What Rick Perry was trying to say I believe is that there needs to be reform. Status quo is not acceptable because these programs are insolvent...so he's saying reform is necessary and we either reform these programs ourselves or the world capital markets will reform them for us."

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  One is that Ms. Palin may favor Mr. Perry in the Republican race.  A second is that she has nicely given him the words to speak to make his negatives on Social Security into positives.

 Of course, he will have to leave out the part about “world capital markets reforming Social Security” since nobody including Ms. Palin has the slightest idea of what that means.  (But if world capital markets want to take a stab at it, they are certainly welcome to do so, in fact politicians of both parties would be happy to let them have the problem.)

So if Mr. Perry takes this approach and successfully challenges his opponents who say they will save Social Security to come up with their own plan he could turn lemons into lemonade, at least for a while.  But if he decides to go the “states rights” route, and suggest Social Security is unconstitutional, and that he supports eliminating, privatizing or turning the program over to the states, then well, goodbye Mr. Perry, nice to have you briefly in the race and come back and see us again.