Messaging
Molly Ivins writes about the Republican message on Social Security. Apparently it's undergoing a subtle shift:
Here's the state of play: Everybody went along in cheerful harmony describing the president's Social Security plan as "partial privatization," since it would allow younger workers to put a third or more of their payroll taxes into private accounts. President Bush called them "private accounts," everyone in the administration called them "private accounts," and Republicans, Democrats and the media all called them "private accounts."
Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of "personal accounts" better than they do "private accounts."
So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as "personal accounts." The Republicans in Congress, the president, the administration and all its media supporters, both paid and unpaid, now insist on referring to the partial privatization plan as "setting up personal accounts." This is the new political correctness.
So watch to see if the message changes in the next weeks as the debate rages. I'm guessing Fox News picks it up immediately, being the good little Hitler messenger that they are.
posted by Dave @ 4:20 PM
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