This item by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is
cross-posted from HuffPost, where it appeared on July 22.
Despite warnings of some of its wisest strategists, the GOP is racing headlong into a political box canyon — and potential political marginality.
On issue after issue, the GOP has veered far from the mainstream of the American electorate. Worse, they are swimming upstream against a tide of changing demographics — and an electorate with ever-increasing numbers of young voters from the “millennial generation” that polls show is the most progressive generation in half a century.
So far, at least, efforts to “rebrand” the GOP have simply collapsed. And even though most Americans are primarily concerned with jobs and the future of the economy, the GOP leadership in Congress insists on focusing on cultural issues that pander to a narrow segment of the electorate — and are downright unpopular.
They seem to be practicing the politics of “subtraction” — which is not a good plan if you want to achieve an electoral majority.
A quick look at the issue landscape tells the tale.
Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women constitute more than a majority of the voting electorate and poll after poll shows that women want the right to make their own reproductive choices without interference from predominantly white, male lawmakers. But the GOP has made its campaign to ban abortion job one. And for many GOP lawmakers and activists it’s not just reproductive choice — it’s banning contraception. Really — in 2013.
Whether in state legislatures like Texas, or the House of Representatives in Washington, instead of jobs, the GOP focuses on passing laws that require doctors to insert unwelcome, medically unnecessary ultra-sound devices into women’s vaginas.
Recently, a GOP consultant advised Republicans to never utter the word “rape” — but they can’t help themselves. You’d think the spectacular collapses of the Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock Senate campaigns in 2012 would have made the point. But just this week, the sponsor of Texas’ restrictive abortion law, Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, explained that after being raped, that “rape kits” are used “clean out” a woman and help protect her from pregnancy. No, Jodie, “rape kits” are used by police to collect evidence to prosecute rapists — not as a primitive form of Plan B — which you presumably oppose.
Immigration Reform. The fall elections sent an unmistakable message that the GOP will be unable to compete for votes from Hispanics and Asian Americans — two fast-growing components of the new American electorate — if they continue to oppose immigration reform.
Some in the Senate got the message. But there is every bit of evidence that many House Republicans will continue to worry more about their narrow Tea Party base than the long-term ability of the GOP to compete.
Earlier this week, Public Policy Polling (PPP) published a poll of voters in the districts of seven GOP lawmakers who represent competitive districts with sizable Hispanic or Asian American populations. The poll found that, by almost two to one, voters said they would be less likely to vote for the GOP incumbent if they voted against immigration reform.
Just as importantly, by equal numbers, they said that if the GOP blocked immigration reform, they would be less likely to vote for Republicans generally.
That means that if Republicans in the House block immigration reform with a path to citizenship for immigrants, they could likely lose seven of the 17 seats the Democrats need to take over the House. And there are many additional districts where the poll results would likely be the same.
Blocking immigration reform could cost the GOP its House majority, but still — notwithstanding the political cover provided them by pro-immigration evangelical and business groups, and many GOP senators — you see large numbers of House Republicans who are dead set against it.
Climate Change and the Environment. Polling shows that very few issues move “Millennials” more than the threat of climate change. But many in the GOP are oblivious, or down-right anti-science — or they are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Big Oil. The result: they are driving away millennial voters in droves.
Millennials and the public at large support legislation to cut down on greenhouse gases, both because they are concerned with public health and because they correctly understand that renewable energy development underpins the economy of the future.
Gun Violence. As if reproductive choice wasn’t enough to drive away women voters, most GOP lawmakers have sold their souls to the NRA and oppose commonsense legislation to limit gun violence.
Of course there are big exceptions, like Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania who noticed his state includes massive numbers of suburban women and decided to co-sponsor the Toomey-Manchin bill to create universal background checks.
Month: July 2013
This item by Erica Seifert was originally published on July 10, 2013.
As Congress returns from recess this week, we would like to believe that it will finally get down to the business of governing — but that would be too optimistic, even for us. Instead, the Republican Congress remains unprepared to address the real issues facing students, working women, and underemployed families. Most likely, the GOP’s top priority will be grinding government to a halt.
Republican leaders may believe that American voters don’t notice, or hope that their constituents will blame President Obama and the Democrats for the dysfunction in Washington. But if they do, the GOP will have severely underestimated the electorate.
Our recent battleground survey in the most vulnerable Republican districts and focus groups in two Republican-controlled states find that the GOP’s approach to “un-governing” has marginalized the party, even in red states.
Take these examples:
–In our recent battleground survey, 69 percent of voters in the most vulnerable Republican districts said that they wanted their representative to work with President Obama to address our problems. Just a quarter (26 percent) of voters in these districts would prefer that their representative try to stop the president from advancing his agenda.
–In the same survey, two of the top concerns among voters in the most vulnerable Republican-held districts were that the Republican Party is “so uncompromising that Washington is gridlocked,” and that the GOP is “only focused on blocking Obama’s agenda.”
In our focus groups, voters in Ohio and Florida were clear about their displeasure with the status quo. Here are some of the terms they used to describe the Republican Party and its leaders:
“Corrupted.”
“Con show.”
“Inflexibility.”
“Argumentative.”
“Too concerned about fighting with the Democrats.”
And when it comes to the Republican Party’s approach to the economy, they say:
“Not willing to work together.”
“Unwilling to compromise.”
“Being inflexible.”
Looking to the future, Republicans are going to have a very difficult time with young people. Here is what young voters in Florida think about the GOP:
“I think they’re just so far off the path that most Americans or people who generally identify themselves as Republicans look beyond.”
“They’re just so stuck.”
“I think it also goes back again to they’re just so… they have to do the opposite of what the Democrats are doing like it doesn’t matter like what it is, like they have to fight so they have to do the opposite. So if they want this then they’re going to want this.”
“This is a prime example of Republicans fighting just to fight, in my opinion.”
Clearly, the GOP is in need of a course correction. With even red-state voters expressing frustration at the nonstop obstruction, Republicans will continue their inflexible approach at their own peril.
This item by J.P. Green was originally published on June 25, 2013.
In his Wonkblog post, “Ross Douthat gets Washington right, then very wrong,” Ezra Klein gets the New York Times columnist right. Douthat argued that the political establishment’s current focus on lower-priority concerns like gun control, immigration and climate change, when the public wants action on jobs and the economy, shows how out-of-touch ‘Washington’ is. Klein explains:
Much of the work here is done by bundling all the relevant players into a disappointing, elitist mass Douthat simply calls “Washington.” It’s “Washington” that’s failing. “Washington” that is not “readying, say, payroll tax relief for working-class families.” “Washington” where “we’re left with the peculiar spectacle of a political class responding to a period of destructive long-term unemployment with an agenda that threatens to help extend that crisis.”
Douthat departs from the “blame Washington” meme long enough to note that “the public’s non-priorities look like the entirety of the White House’s second-term agenda.” It’s a fairly transparent propaganda trick. Blame the entire political system for the paralyzing obstructionism of a faction in congress, while singling out the major player willing to compromise for the common good as somehow responsible for the failure to secure an agreement.
The political system in Washington — not the capitol itself — is broken in places, but not in ways that Douthat is willing to acknowledge. The abuse of the filibuster, for example, is a destructive systemic malady, which must be fixed before a working consensus can be secured. Yet, even this systemic impediment exists because of the Republican Party’s refusal to negotiate in good faith on the priority concerns of jobs and the economy, as well as nearly all other issues.
“Washington” has become a term that conflict-averse and pro-Republican commentators use to delude the public, and in some cases themselves, that GOP obstructionism is not the core problem. Opinion polls indicate that it’s not working all that well. Sure, millions of people parrot silly expressions like “Washington is out of touch.” But when specifically asked which party is more out of touch, in poll after poll more will say it’s the Republicans.
The better conservative columnists and commentators like Will, Brooks and Douthat, will occasionally fault the GOP for lame comments by its leaders and dumb tactical moves. But when it comes to assessing the GOP’s grand strategy of knee-jerk, full-tilt obstructionism to anything significant proposed by the President or Democrats, top conservative commentators shrug it off. They never defend the gridlock strategy directly, but their silence knowingly gives it a free pass. Their party — and America — would be better-served if they opened up the dialogue.
The following article is cross-posted from an e-blast by Alan Abramowitz, author of The Polarized Pubic, and Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science, Emory University:
It’s become the latest trope among some of the Washington commentariat. And not just among the usual right wing bloggers and pundits like the WaPo’s irrepressible Jennifer Rubin. There’s just one problem with this claim . . . it’s not true. Or at least it’s greatly exaggerated. What we seem to have here is yet another example of the MSM along with conservative pundits and news outlets cherry picking the polling data.
I compared Obama’s net approval rating (approval-disapproval) in the seven most recent polls (Rasmussen, Fox, Gallup, YouGov/Economist, ABC/WP, NBC/WSJ and Pew with polls done by the same organizations in late June (or earlier if there was no June poll–the previous NBC/WSJ poll was done in May). Three polls showed an improvement while four showed a decline. On average, these seven polls showed a net approval rating of -1 for Obama now compared with . . . are you ready, a net approval rating of -1 for Obama in their earlier polling.
Yes, a couple of these polls (NBC/WSJ and Pew) showed drops in net approval of 6 points. But a couple (Fox and Rasmussen) actually showed improvements that were just as large. So maybe everyone should take a deep breath and wait for some more polling data–there just aren’t a lot of polls being released these days other than the regular Gallup and Rasmussen trackers) so the averages can easily be influenced by one or two outliers. Obama’s approval numbers have declined a bit since early 2013 when he was still benefiting from a modest post-election bounce. But so far there’s no convincing evidence that his ratings have continued declining in the past few weeks. A glance at the Gallup weekly results shows that the same divisions that have existed in the past and that were present in the 2012 election are still very much in evidence but that Obama’s popularity with the groups that make up his core constituency remains strong.
The following is from an e-blast by Democracy Corps:
Democracy Corps is announcing a new initiative — the Republican Party Project — by releasing results from the project’s first national survey.
The President and Democrats won big in 2012 but Republicans now set the terms of the debate — governing from the gerrymandered House and half the states where they have complete control over the governorships and state legislatures. But instead of moving to the center, brokering compromise, and working with Democrats, the Republican Party has moved dramatically to the right and endangered itself as a national party — yet pundits are convinced the party will pay no price for having little national appeal.
Democracy Corps’ Republican Party Project puts the spotlight on the Republican Party. We expose the scale of dysfunction, divisions, and public resistance to the conventional wisdom. We show a Republican Party deeply divided — with Evangelicals and strong Tea Party supporters half of the party, and its most extreme elements. Moderates, a quarter of the Republican Party, hold more mainstream views on many issues — yet are drowned out in a party where they have no voice.
Through this new wave of research, we aim to help the White House and Democrats get back on the offensive. In the Civil War, General Meade did not pursue General Lee after Gettysburg and let the Confederate Army escape — extending the war two years. Unlike Meade, Democrats must pursue and push back against a Republican Party increasingly out of touch with majority America.
Graphs here.
Frequency Questionnaire here.
In his Washington Monthly past, “New Ideas and Old Conflicts,” Ed Kilgore’s take on the president’s Knox College speech puts the “no new ideas” critique into sharp perspective.
As predicted, the president’s Knox College speech did not include a lot of “new ideas” about how to improve the performance of the economy or the lives of Americans. It was more of a progress report on the implementation of the ideas he’s articulated in the past, with particular emphasis on the obstacles presented by congressional Republicans in the past, present and immediate future.
Now there are several different negative perceptions out there about Obama’s lack of “new ideas.” One, frequently discussed by MSM observers, simply assumes that novelty is a virtue in itself, or is owed to their own selves because they are bored about writing about the same old same old. Today’s Dana Milbank WaPo column is a good example of that rather empty and self-centered complaint.
Then there is the objection offered by conservatives, based on the presumption that “new ideas” mean their ideas. So the only way for Obama to come up with any “new ideas” on the economy is to surrender or at least offer to compromise (with the latter option being undermined by what has happened every time he’s done that in the past).
Still another negative perceptions is offered by some liberals: Obama–deliberately or out of political necessity–hasn’t presented any new ideas because he’s too busy hedging and compromising and worrying about marginal constituencies or Wall Street….
Kilgore then provides this excerpt from Kevin Drum’s Mother Jones post noting the lack of big policy ideas in the speech:
Raise the minimum wage to $12! Split up the big banks, tax hedge funds at regular rates, stomp on derivatives and commodities trading, and increase capital requirements to 20 percent! Raise Social Security payments! Guarantee universal pre-K/childcare starting at three months! Invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure! Mandate four weeks of vacation for all employees! Eliminate software patents! Increase the capital gains tax to 40 percent!
None of this has the slightest chance of passage. But when you’re competing with a party whose message is about as subtle as a blood-and-guts slasher pic, you need something equally dramatic to show everyone what your party stands for. Dana Milbank still wouldn’t be happy, of course. He’d call you crazy. But that’s better than having him call you lifeless, isn’t it?
Kilgore also quotes from Steve Benen’s Maddow Blog dissection of the whining about ‘no new ideas’:
Imagine a guy goes to the doctor with an ailment and asks for a remedy. She gives the appropriate diagnosis that would make the guy better, but the patient and hospital administrators decide the solution to the problem is ideologically unsatisfying, so the prescription is ignored.
The guy’s condition doesn’t improve, so he goes back to the doctor, who again recommends the correct remedy, which is ignored once more.
As time elapses and there’s little improvement, the guy returns. The doctor reiterates her support for the appropriate solution, which has been endorsed by other medical professionals, and would work if tried. The patient replies, “It sounds to me like you’re fresh out of ideas and going into reruns.”
To which Kilgore responds:
On the economy, Obama’s premise is that middle-class prosperity and opportunity is both a crucial contributor to and the best measurement of economic success. From a conservative perception if any steps to improve the lot of middle-class families come at the expense of “job-creators,” they are by definition too expensive.
Obama considers economic inequality self-evidently a problem. Conservatives typically think it’s self-evidently the result of nature and markets (which are, of course, virtually the same thing).
Obama regards the public sector as potentially both a contributor and impediment to economic growth. Despite occasional lip-service to the need for a “positive governing agenda,” conservative economic “ideas” almost exclusively revolve around total or partial abandonment of public responsibilities.
“New ideas,” or even the much-desired “competition of ideas,” require agreement on the problems to be solved and the legitimate range of instruments that can be used to solve them. We don’t really have that in the “debate” over American economic policy right now. Maybe we will again at some point in the near future, and then it will be important that “new ideas” blossom in both parties. Right now, we’re still trying to decide which broad vision of the economy will guide our government, and in tying his own vision to the upcoming fiscal fights, Obama’s doing just what the doctor ordered.
Kilgore is right. Further, ‘new ideas’ are just placebos until voters take the best medicine to purge the sickness. When that is accomplished new ideas can help lead the way to optimum health.
For a cogent analysis of the President’s Knox College speech, check out Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine post, “Obama: It’s Not My Fault Republicans Are Crazy,” which observes:
President Obama’s economic speech today is putatively a broad-stroke overview of his economic vision — investing in physical infrastructure and early childhood education, restraining runaway inflation in the cost of health care and college, and marginally shifting the burden of government away from the middle class and toward the rich. In reality, it is a call for a responsible opposition.
Thematically, it is hard to build a speech around the opposition when you’re president, because people expect the president to lead and set the agenda. But the extraordinary tactics of the House Republicans have created an unusual and counterintuitive situation wherein the president’s agenda is mostly irrelevant. Conservatives simply refuse to negotiate with Obama in conventional terms. Their strategy is to threaten a series of crises — government shutdown, defaulting on the debt — in order to force the president to offer unilateral concessions.
Chait notes the House Republicans preference for hiking spending for “ludicrous farm subsidies” over Democratic-supported investments in needed energy breakthroughs, along with Boehner’s reversal on lifting the debt ceiling and holding it hostage for unspecified budget cuts. “But the deeper problem is the Republican opposition to negotiating the differences at all,” explains Chait. Under Boehner’s Custer-like leadership, “the GOP is increasingly rallying around the threat of a government shutdown as a last-ditch stand to prevent the implementation of health care reform,” adds Chait.
Chait credits the president with pointing out that “simply not manufacturing a crisis is an ambitious goal for the House Republicans,” while appealing to the few public-spirited GOP reps remaining “to not muddle along and to take bold action instead.”
“Obama’s ultimate goal,” adds Chait, “is not merely to insulate himself from blame if and when House Republicans shut down the government or threaten to default on the debt, but to build a coalition with pragmatic Republicans to negotiate around Boehner’s back.” Chait quotes Rep. Ryan expressing arrogant contempt for GOP pragmatists, and concludes “Obama’s speech laid out a compelling vision of long-term prosperity, but the inescapable reality he faces is much, much uglier.”
It’s hard to avoid the increasing indications that the GOP leadership’s circle-the-wagons strategy is not going to end well for them. Sadly, millions of Americans are likely to be denied the benefits of pragmatic politics before we get there.
July 22, 2013
Dear Readers:
Several weeks ago Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps released their 2014 Congressional Battleground survey. The conclusion they reached was startlingly optimistic and at odds with the common wisdom among political commentators.
As the survey stated:
The first Democracy Corps Congressional Battleground survey of the most competitive House races will challenge serious commentary and the informed presumptions about the 2014 election. Analysts, pundits, and commentators have concluded that there will be fewer seats in play in 2014 and that neither party is likely to upset the current balance.
To be honest, our poll results surprised us. They show that Republicans are just as vulnerable as 2012 and that Democrats could at least replicate the net gain of 8 seats they achieved in that last election.
Greenberg’s conclusion challenged a wide consensus among political analysts who argued that Dems could not avoid severe setbacks in the off-year elections and that the Democracy Corps analysis simply had to be too optimistic.
Last Friday, Greenberg fired back at the pessimists in an article that he published in the Huffington Post. As he said:
The serious arbiters of Congressional forecasting reacted to the Democracy Corps survey with an almost ideological aversion to the Republicans-will-pay-a-price-for-extremism framework that really blocked them from considering the evidence at face value. Stuart Rothenberg described our memo as “an advocacy document, not an analytic one”…The Cook Report’s David Wasserman says his reading of the data leads him to the opposite conclusion. Democrats are more exposed than Republicans…Just this past week, one critic in the Guardian embraced the Cook Report analysis and piled on with historical inevitability: only three times since the Civil War has the presidential party made gains in off-year elections.
Greenberg then boldly continued:
But I encourage everyone to step back and listen to voters in the current context and not allow a pre-conceived beltway presumption to screen out what people may be saying and feeling…
…What is brewing is evidence that voters are indeed paying attention to the mayhem, gridlock and extremism in Washington — and that is precisely where the Democracy Corps poll shows the biggest changes from last year.
First, working with President Obama rather than trying to block his agenda. By 64 to 30 percent in the Republican battleground seats, these off-year voters want their member to work with the president — up 5 points from October and 10 points from last summer…
Second, the Tea Party. Though the off-year battleground is more Republican, negative feelings about the Tea Party have jumped 5 points since the election to half the electorate. The Tea Party is even more unpopular in the Democratic seats…
Third, tax increases to address to our problems and reduce the deficit. Just 39 percent of the voters in these Republican off-year districts want to vote for the kind of no-tax Republican that represents them. A majority want to raise taxes in a balanced way like the President — again, tied for the highest margin on this question, despite the off-year.
And fourth, Medicare and seniors. The Republicans faced their biggest electoral pull back since November among seniors in both the Republican and Democratic districts. Maybe seniors noticed the centrality of Medicare and entitlements in all the Republican battle plans.
Greenberg concludes:
…Maybe voters are now connecting the dots that they were not inclined to do during a presidential election and choice…We would all benefit from listening to the voters who may be trying to tell us something about what is happening in Washington and the U.S. Congress.
Greenberg’s complete analysis is vitally and urgently important for all Democrats to examine because there is one fact about the 2014 elections that is indeed absolutely certain: if Dems accept a fatalistic, “history says we can’t do well” point of view today, this will guarantee a negative result sixteen months from now.
So Dems owe it to themselves to read Stan’s commentary and not passively accept today’s common beltway wisdom. After all, Democrats already proved the common wisdom about bi-elections wrong once before recently — in 1998 when a nationwide backlash against GOP extremism produced a Democratic wave that none of the experts predicted.
Read Stan Greenberg’s article here:
Is there no price to be paid for GOP extremism?
We believe you will find the analysis profoundly important and extremely useful.
Sincerely Yours,
Ed Kilgore
Managing Editor
The Democratic Strategist
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org
From Eduardo Porter’s New York Times article, “Pro-Baby, but Stingy With Money to Support Them“:
…There is an odd inconsistency in conservatives’ stance on procreation: many also support some of the harshest cuts in memory to government benefit programs for families and children.
First Focus, an advocacy group for child-friendly policies, will release on Wednesday its latest “Children’s Budget,” which shows how federal spending on children has declined more than 15 percent in real terms from its high in 2010, when the fiscal stimulus law raised spending on programs like Head Start and K-12 education.
Some school districts have been forced to fire teachers, cut services and even shorten the school week. Head Start has cut its rolls. Families have lost housing support. And the 2014 budget passed by Republicans in the House cuts investments in children further — sharply reducing money for the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.
No doubt readers could add a lot more to this litany of Republican neglect of children, including their long-standing opposition to adequate appropriations for improving child health care and nutrition. Despite all of the pious “family friendly” rhetoric trumpeted by Republicans, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that child health and welfare are far lower priorities for Republicans than tax breaks to fatten the assets of the already-wealthy. Noting declining birth and fertility rates which have kicked in since the recession, Porter continues,
But though American families may have adapted better than others to women’s march into the labor force, the United States lags far behind in providing the government support that makes it easier for many couples to start a family.
There is widespread evidence that government assistance to families increases fertility. France’s generous child subsidies, for instance, have been credited with lifting that nation’s fertility rate above 2, from about 1.75 in the mid-1990s. A study in Quebec found that increasing benefits to new parents by 1,000 Canadian dollars increased the probability of having a child by 16.9 percent. One study in Sweden traced its higher fertility compared to other Scandinavian countries to government programs like paid leave and subsidized day care, which made it easier for mothers to work.
“Pro-life” Republicans go on and on about about the inhumanity of abortion. But when it comes to making sure impoverished children have a good chance to lead a healthy life, their concern rapidly evaporates. As Porter concludes, “If conservatives truly believe that the United States needs more babies, they might temper their hostility to programs that help families afford them.”
Ed Kilgore’s “Are Old Folks Souring on the GOP?” at The Washington Monthly raises the interesting possibility that Republicans are losing their most reliable edge in the mid term elections, putting 2014 into serious play for Dems. Kilgore quotes Charlie Cook on Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polling data:
Democrats are closely watching the voting pattern of older Americans, a group that voted heavily Republican in the 2010 midterm and, to a lesser extent, in 2012; in March and July surveys, older voters’ responses are showing only about half the GOP margin they voted last November and about a quarter of the Republican margin in the 2010 midterm election. It’s unclear what exactly is going on, but this formerly strong Democratic group had moved pretty heavily against Democrats and Obama since he took office. Some signs indicate, however, this trend could be diminishing somewhat. And because older voters tend to vote in disproportionately higher numbers in midterm elections, any changes could be important.
Kilgore explains further:
In 2006, when Democrats made major gains, they took 49% of the senior vote. In the next mid-term, they lost seniors by a catastrophic 59-38 margin. And the Democratic share of the senior vote in the last three presidential elections has dropped from 47% in 2004 to 45% in 2008 to 44% in 2012. So it would be natural to expect a pretty bad number in this demographic for Democrats in 2014, with perhaps an even higher percentage of the electorate at play.
If, as GQR’s numbers suggest, the Republican momentum among old folks has not only diminished but reversed, that’s a very big deal.
With respect to GOP strategy to address eroding support among seniors, Kilgore adds:
As Cook notes, it’s not clear why this is happening if it is happening. But if Republicans are paying close attention to the phenomenon, as they should, the implications are pretty clear for those whose ideological inclinations point in this direction anyway: it’s time for another big Mediscare effort linked to attacks on Obamacare that encourage white retirees to view the Affordable Care Act as a raid on their hard-earned benefits and hard-earned earned tax dollars to show welfare on those people. Since Republicans also believe there’s big political hay to be made on Obamacare at the other end of the age spectrum, with young folks who perceive their need for health insurance as about as high a priority as their need for real estate on Mars, it’s really a no-brainer, and what “the base” would want to focus even if it didn’t represent a political opportunity.
Yet, with Republicans always trying to screw around with Social Security and Medicare, and increasing reports of GOP state officials welching on earned pensions hundreds of thousands of seniors have been counting on, you have to wonder, what took them so long?
