Republicans down on the AARP?

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has the goods on the Bush administration's plan to "destroy" the AARP because of its opposition to President Bush's Social Security plan:

"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, the president of USA Next, a conservative lobbying group. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." He sounded more like Wile E. Coyote than a former interior official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. "They can run, but they can't hide," he said. But the walker-and-cane set is hard to picture in the Road Runner role.

Dowd also quotes The Washington Monthly, which calls USA Next's United Seniors Association, "a self-styled AARP rival, 'a soft-money slush fund for a single G.O.P.-friendly industry: pharmaceuticals.'" Yes, it's all starting to sound grotesquely familiar.

Sometimes Dowd comes across as too preachy or too smart-ass for her own good; but this time she's got it about right. And I'm glad she's quoting other sources, such as The Washington Monthly and the NYT's own Glen Justice, who reported that USA Next, "which has spent millions on Republican policy fights, has pledged to spend as much as $10 million on ads and other tactics to 'dynamite' AARP and get Americans to rip up Social Security. It's hiring some of the same consultants who helped the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who dynamited John Kerry, a war hero, by sliming him as a war criminal."

But the one observation Dowd makes that really hits home is this:

Once again, just as W. runs into political trouble, he floats above the fray while the help takes out his opponents. Just as John McCain was smeared by Bush supporters in 2000, Swift Boat assassins can rid the president of any meddlesome adversaries now.

The USA Next group intends to combine the two ruthless success stories of the Bush re-election: the Swiftian tactic of amplifying its vicious and dishonest attacks through the media, and the Rovian tactic of hanging gay marriage like an anvil around the neck of a foe.

One of these days, I hope, President Bush will finally be held responsible for the vicious and underhand methods to manipulate the press undertaken in his name. That's not to say that other presidents on both sides of the aisle haven't engaged in media-manipulative skulduggery: they all have, from Teddy Roosevelt on. But President Bush has pushed the envelope far beyond previous limits. It's his administration. The buck must stop with him. I really think his actions are having a deleterious impact on a functioning civic democracy. He should - finally - be exposed for what he has done and pay a steep political price. Perhaps going after the AARP will be his Waterloo. Perhaps ...