i thought this was interesting from Paul Krugman:

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Call it "What's the Matter With Kansas - The Cartoon Version."

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security
privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of
them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking
orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an
independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being
against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll
be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.

The answer lies in "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank's
meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working
Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote for
them.

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the
"reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right's electoral
victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the
campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of
disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the
consequences of privatization.

But if that were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe,
because this particular disinformation campaign isn't going at all well.
In fact, there's a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social Security
about the other side's lack of preparation. The Cato Institute and the
Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for privatization. Yet
they weren't ready to answer even the most obvious questions about how it
would work - like how benefits could be maintained for older Americans
without a dangerous increase in debt.

Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to
strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick
Santorum's recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college
Republicans began chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go."

But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational
arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank.

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win
elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by
portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a
malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive
social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to
pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve
economic ends."

In Mr. Frank's view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr.
Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true
loyalty is to elitist economic policies. "Vote to stop abortion; receive a
rollback in capital gains taxes. ... Vote to stand tall against
terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." But it keeps working.

And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was
as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle
Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for
working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's
hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid
seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which
right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to
exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the
rule, not the exception.

For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a
series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by
secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The
evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an
official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas."

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was
created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is
especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and
Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above
the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone
who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears
to come.