If you were paying attention to Republicans over the last couple of days, you'd have heard a lot of repetitions of a particular idea, when the subject of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's new budget proposal came up. "Chuck Schumer and others are going to attack them for the proposals they've made, rather than to try to work in a constructive way," said Sen. John Cornyn. "We are giving them a political weapon to go out against us, but they will have to lie and demagogue to make that a political weapon," said Ryan himself.
Here's the thing: If a criticism is true, it's not demagoguery. Yes, in criticizing Ryan's plan, Democrats will be saying, "It eliminates Medicare." That will (and should) make many people who hear it afraid. But you know what? Ryan's plan eliminates Medicare! It takes it from being a single-payer insurance program, in which everyone over 65 is covered no matter what, and turns it into a voucher program, in which seniors will get money from the government, with which they can then go buy insurance from one of the friendly private insurance companies. It eliminates Medicare on a 10-year delayed fuse (so if you're over 55 now, you'll still have access to the program that has been working spectacularly well for the last 40 years), but after that, you'll just be getting a voucher (there's some dispute over whether "voucher" is the appropriate term given how the payments would be made, but that's essentially what it is). At that point, you can call it whatever you want, but it won't be Medicare anymore.
The rhetorical tactic is called "inoculation," which basically consists of describing the argument your opponent is going to make and refuting it, thereby inoculating people against the argument when they hear it. Is it going to work? Not if Democrats are vigorous about their case. Of course, if they get spooked and start acting defensive, it will work. If they just repeat the truth -- Ryan's plan eliminates Medicare -- again, and again, and again so people understand, then they'll win.
But wait, you might be saying -- isn't Medicare less expensive than private insurance, since Medicare spends so little on overhead and administration, while private insurance spends so much (not to mention what has to be set aside for profits)? And isn't this supposed to be a plan to balance the budget? So how do you take less expensive Medicare, turn it into a voucher program for more expensive private insurance, and save money?
The answer, as Ezra Klein explains, is that you just cut the voucher amount over time, so seniors will get less and less money to buy the more expensive private insurance. That'll work. Jon Cohn has more details here.
