The Ramp to Masada

Just to make the point clear that winning on the issues is for shit if you can't win on the message, I point you to this Josh Marshall post:

I must say, I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.

Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.

Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered.

The polling on Bush' s Social Security plan is atrocious and has been getting worse by the day. Yet the Republican messaging has been absorbed fully by the establishment media and regurgitated full-blown at the first opportunity. The Democrats have spent months bringing down Bush's talk about "bankruptcy", but all that work meant nothing if we honestly examine the headlines.

Bush's program is being rejected. But his language is not. That language is The Ramp to Masada. It just makes it that much easier for the next attack to succeed.