Demagogue

Reporting on a 10-stop tour of his state by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that one of the tour's main goals "is to soothe anxiety about President Bush's proposal to allow workers younger than 55 to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts ..."

But based on the newspaper's descriptions, Santorum's pro-private accounts sales pitch soothed only some of his constituents:

At one point, when [Santorum] showed charts illustrating the causes of the nation's rising deficits and referred to discretionary spending on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-time costs, audience members responded loudly with boos and catcalls.

... the president also has held a series of public 'conversations' about Social Security, but participants at those events were almost always handpicked by the administration to showcase Americans who support or would benefit from his proposals.

By contrast, at Santorum's first event in Pittsburgh, audience members were allowed to line up at the microphone. Many expressed deep opposition to the personal-accounts proposal, noting their own stock market losses in recent years and their opposition to the cost of creating such accounts -- $754 billion over 10 years ...

... Santorum's arguments yesterday had more resonance among his younger listeners, who in national polling have been far more supportive of the president's proposal than older workers. Though some admitted that they had attended Santorum's presentation mainly for extra credit in their college courses, some said they were annoyed that many people opposing changes to the system would not be affected by them.

I suspect that Santorum followed the talking points from the GOP document that he himself co-signed. These talking points urge Republicans to call the private-accounts reform "personalization," not "privatization."