TO DO: Cash in that Social Security Check

When is a mandate a mandate? Ever since the election, Democrats have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming that, “Bush does not have a mandate!” Their argument seems to hinge on the thread that even though President Bush won the election handily, with 51 percent of the vote — 49 percent still aren’t happy. Well LA DEE DA! Fifty-one percent is the essence of democracy, because 51 percent is a majority. Everywhere democracy is instituted, from boardrooms to schoolrooms to family rooms and kitchens, a majority always carries the day. If there were three people deciding where to go to dinner and two people voted for steak, and the remaining one voted for chicken, you can bet dollars to dominoes that
Beef — it’s what’s for dinner.

What is it about liberals in this country? They carp all day long about democracy, but as soon as it is exercised, they immediately take up the position that the winner now has to cater to the loser. It’s INSANE! In a New Republic published after the election, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson contend that the idea that Bush has a mandate is “patently absurd.” Nobody votes for all the things the candidate stands for, so why should the candidate do any of the things he promised in his campaign? That’s the way these people think. One editorial after another, and countless made-for-TV democratic “strategists” claim that Bush doesn’t have a mandate for tax cuts, doesn’t have a mandate for gay marriage, doesn’t have a mandate for abortion.

The most recent liberal to refuse the mandate is former Clinton economic advisor Gene Sperling. After Bush immediately got to work on pushing for Social Security reform (to the amazement of Democrats who never do what they campaign on), Sperling said to The Washington Post:

“All the president has shown is that you can vaguely talk about a free-lunch privatization proposal and not have that be decisively detrimental to your electoral outcome. There’s a big difference between that and having a mandate to carve up Social Security by cutting guaranteed benefits and adding significant market risk.”

Besides grossly mischaracterizing Bush’s Social Security proposal as “free-lunch privatization,” Sperling totally misses the point — the president said that this is what he’s going to do if he won the election and (wow!) this is what he’s doing after winning the election.

The point is lost on liberals though, because they still think that red-staters swung for Bush because of their predilection towards homophobia and their fear of women’s reproductive rights. Most Democrats probably still think that Heartland Republicans are too busy looking for abortion clinics to burn, which is why prominent Democrats think they can get away with calling the President’s Social Security plan a Christmas present to Wall Street.

Harry Reid, the new Senate minority leader, said, “They are trying to destroy Social Security by giving this money to the fat cats on Wall Street, and I think it’s wrong!”

Maybe it’s wrong, or maybe the American people want to grow their own money instead of spending their grandchildren’s.