By Joan Walsh
Salon.com
I'm excited now that Republicans are starting to reveal their agenda for the midterm elections in November. I enjoy the whole Club for Growth push: "Privatize Social Security? Hell, yeah." I love it when right-wingers semi-swear, it seems so manly.
Tonight MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out that Wall Street charges five times as much as the federal government does to manage retirement funds. Besides, President Bush went on a road show to push privatization in 2005 and, well, nobody really showed up at his shows. He went away. I remain stunned by the willingness of mainstream Republicans to tamper with Social Security and Medicare, as the Tea Party gathers strength around just those issues.
But is the Tea Party really gathering strength? A Quinnipiac poll Wednesday found that Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino is only 6 points behind Democrat Andrew Cuomo, but I don't see that as a harbinger of a Tea Party surge or Democratic weakness. First, the poll may have oversampled Republican voters, and it didn't include former GOP candidate Rick Lazio, now running on the Conservative Party line, who could take votes from Paladino if he continues to run. I'm also sure Paladino got a bump from upsetting Lazio; everybody loves an underdog, and nobody was excited about a guy last seen on the national political stage losing decisively to Hillary Clinton 10 years ago. Besides, Paladino's a great story: Can a guy who's sent racist and pornographic email really become New York governor? Is this a great country, or what? I'm excited to learn the answer to that, even though I'm pretty sure that it's "Hell, no!"
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