ZOMBIE TALKING POINTS

Social Security is, as we all know, a very popular and very successful program. For a variety of reasons, centrist pundits in general and the Washington Post in particular have a huge fetish about undermining it in various ways. Recently, CeCi Connolly -- yes, the same one whose gruesomely bad campaign reporting helped to put George W. Bush in the White House -- got into the act, asserting that a "handful of changes that would prevent the retirement fund from going bankrupt." Of course, Social Security and its large dedicated funding stream are not going to "run out of money" or "go bankrupt" ever; there's a (far from certain) possibility that the trust fund generated by Social Security tax surpluses will run out of money. This is a different issue, but of course if you state the issue honestly it's hard to generate support for gutting Social Security decades before a not-terribly-difficult-to-resolve problem may or may not need solving.

So, of course, it makes perfect stance for the Washington Post to stand by their man George Will. After all, they're willing to let Connolly tell bald-faced whoppers about Social Security just like she invented statements and attributed them to Al Gore. And if you can do it on their news pages, I suppose their op-ed pundits deserve no less consideration.

--Scott Lemieux