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Attack on AARP Starts with the Dirtiest of Politics
by Swift Boat Gang
By Tucker Sutherland, editor
 Feb.
22, 2005 - The political hatchet men who brought us the Swift Boat ads
in the last presidential election, have launched their avowed
assassination attempt of the AARP with an ad showing an X over a soldier
and a check mark over two kissing men which is labeled "The Real AARP
Agenda." USA Next, a right-wing political group, is angry because AARP
opposes the privatization of Social Security proposed by President Bush.
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Our Opinion
Social Security: Senior Citizens Should Sink the
Swift Boaters; Throw a Life Preserver to AARP
Let's strengthen the system we have now, before
considering private accounts
By Tucker Sutherland, editor, SeniorJournal.com
Feb. 21, 2005 The battle over how to reform
Social Security is about to get ugly. The Bush team hopes to squash the
AARP by using some of the same tactics they used to dispatch John Kerry
in the presidential race. The people responsible for the infamous Swift
Boat Veterans campaign are now gearing up to sink AARP because of their
opposition to the Bush plan to take money out of the Social Security
program and put it in private investment accounts.
Read more...
More
stories on Social Security Reform - Click Here
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The ad first appeared Monday on the Website of The
American Spectator, a conservative magazine. It was picked up by several bloggers and made the rounds of the Internet before appearing on some
television news reports. The ad was then replaced.
The new ad is a link to the Website of USA Next
with several negative headline stories about AARP.
The lead story on the site is promoted with, "Top
Story - Charlie Jarvis Appears on
The O'Reilly Factor Charlie Jarvis, USA Next's Chairman &
CEO, recently appeared on Fox News' The Factor with Bill O'Reilly
to discuss why so many Americans are turning to USA Next as an
alternative to the liberal AARP."
Reportedly, a spokesman for USA Next told news
networks they were just testing public reaction to their first ad.
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured
millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to
spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing
AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at
the center of Bush's plan, reported Glen Justice in the New York Times
on Sunday.
Justice wrote, "They are the boulder in the middle
of the highway to personal savings accounts, said Charlie Jarvis, the
group's president and former deputy secretary for the interior in the
Reagan and first Bush administrations. We will be the dynamite that
removes them.
Jarvis said the group's goal was to peel off one
million members from the AARP, by presenting itself as a conservative,
free-market alternative. He says USA Next surveys show more than 37
percent of the AARP members call themselves Republicans, according to
Justice.
"We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand
combat," said Jarvis, who is biting in his remarks about AARP, calling
the group "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch."
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This is where the ad appeared on The American
Spectator Website. The ad you see here is the replacement. |
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This is the page at the USA Next Website that
is linked to the ad. |
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