2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Sanders is "blasting" the media for calling out Carson for his lies about his life. [View all]pnwmom
(108,977 posts)he advocated getting rid of Medicare and Social Security.
So focusing on those issues alone isn't likely to spare us from the horror of a Ben Carson presidency.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1962reaganama
During a campaign debate between President Jimmy Carter (D-GA) and his Republican challenger, Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), Carter lambasts Reagan for his decades-long opposition to Medicare (see 1962). Governor Reagan, as a matter of fact, began his political career campaigning around this nation against Medicare, Carter says. Reagan counters with what author Larry DeWitt calls a deft quip and a blatant denial. He says, There you go again. When the laughter subsides, Reagan continues: When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before the Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought it would be better for the senior citizens and provide better care than the one that was finally passed. I was not opposing the principle of providing care for them. I was opposing one piece of legislation versus another. Reagan is referring to a Republican alternative called Bettercare that was little more than a voluntary insurance program funded by Social Security. Carter also states that Reagan had, in his career, advocated making Social Security a voluntary program, which as Carter notes, would, in effect, very quickly bankrupt it. Reagan had frequently advocated such a position while supporting Senator Barry Goldwaters 1964 presidential campaign, and as recently as 1975 during his unsuccessful primary campaign for the presidency, but Reagan now denies taking such a stance: Now, again this statement that somehow I wanted to destroy it, and I just changed my tune, that I am for voluntary social security, which would mean the ruin of it, Mr. President, the voluntary thing that I suggested many years ago was that a young man, orphaned and raised by an aunt who died, his aunt was ineligible for Social Security insurance, because she was not his mother. And I suggested that if this was an insurance program, certainly the person whos paying in should be able to name his own beneficiaries. And thats the closest Ive ever come to anything voluntary with Social Security. Though Reagans claims are at odds with his previous positions, his denials go virtually unchallenged in the media.