Social Security Reform Flip-Flops

The reason I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat is because those parties seemed married to simply opposing each other. Trying to find a principle that those parties have stuck by and followed for their entire life is like trying to find a unicorn that has wings.

Allow me to give a recent example. Yesterday, I was listening to Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot on tape. It made me laugh a few times, but that is beside the point. In that book Al (or his fact checker Jeff depending on how seriously you take parts of the book) has a chapter about Social Security reform. Now this book was written during Clinton about 93 or so I think. Al does not give any specific plans, but seems committed to some sort of reform of the system. He uses phrases like “immanent collapse” of the system and critiques how the politicians have decided not to touch the problem just so they can have “20 more years of peace.” So, I thought for sure Al would be endorsing Bush’s plan or at least excited about the prospect of reform. Yet in the blog section of his web site, he seems to favor walking a way from the table and doing nothing because President Bush gambles with the future of Social Security. Flip flops like this hurt my head.

Just in case you think it is limited to Democrats please examine Republican positions on the Department of Education, balanced budgets, and deficit spending. Oh yeah, and when the Republican party came into existence in the 1850’s they were the party of Big Government and the Democrats were the party for limited government. Go figure.