Social Security, part CXIII

Mark Schmitt has a theory that goes something like this:

1. Social Security privatization will most probably fail, and Karl Rove knows it.
2. If it doesn't fail, the transition costs will ruin the economy, so Rove probably wants it to fail.
   
3. Therefore, it's a setup. Rove wants something evil but less evil than privatization.
4. Knowing Rove, it might not even be legislation or benefit cuts. He just might want to corner the Democrats, put them on the defensive. Skew the idiom in the war of ideas even more in favor of Repub-speak, make the Democrats look like the big spenders and the Republicans the party for fiscal sanity.
   

But whatever the plan was, it has backfired. Like Schmitt says:

This sorry game is over. The challenge for Democrats is now to drag it out, to inflict maximum pain, to drag this out at least as long as the Clinton health care debacle was drawn out.

Word.