Under Social Security privatization, same-sex partners “could receive survivor benefits or dependent benefits.”
If gays “are to make the best of the situation, they should support private accounts, forming alliances with Republicans who support limited government.”
Gay activists have little to lose from such support of Social Security privatization.”
Sure they do. We all do. Privatization is almost guaranteed to provide us all substantially less benefits. Do you want your retirement money managed by Wall Street? Do you trust Wall Street to do the right thing? Well of course you don’t.
Nor should gays trust Bush to do the right thing for them. It’s a given that he won’t. Moreover, this is triangulation.
If I asked you what the worst thing in American politics was today, I would get a variety of answers. Some of you might say “dishonesty”, others recoil from the “negativity” and I’m sure there are plenty of Americans fed up with the “petty partisanship” we’re confronted with at ever turn. But me? I’d point to Dick Morris’ Frankenstein monster, triangulation.
Triangulation is the art of trying to be all things to all voters, or at least getting as close as possible. What you want to do is support things that will fire up your base without alienating the voters in the middle. Then when your opponent comes up with an idea that may allow him to pull away some of your support, you don’t fight him, you adopt his idea, whether you agree with it or not. Doing this allows you to pull in the moderates who along with your base which will make it likely that you’ll win at the ballot box. In short, triangulation is political akido that allows you to defeat your opponent by replacing your principles and ideology with polling data.