It’s been fascinating to watch Elon Musk and his destructive dweebs aim their sledgehammers at Social Security.

I almost wish they’d screw just a wee bit with the monthly money that 72 million people dependably receive — say, some delivery delays and under-payments here and there — because maybe that might finally compel lots of MAGA voters to wake the hell up.

As a Social Security recipient myself, I’m willing to take that kind of hit if it serves the greater good. Failing outright sabotage, however, I’m kind of hoping that the Putin-Musk-Trump troika sustains its current assaults – mapping office closures, stealing our private info, smearing Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — because such hostility has always been political suicide.

According to 2024 exit polls, half of those aged 65 and older voted for Trump. How will those red voters feel if their Social Security payments show up late in their online accounts or not at all? If it’s indeed no longer possible to engage their intellects in the interests of sanity, then perhaps a hard whack in the wallet might move the needle.

Social Security has long been wildly popular. In a Pew Research poll last year, 79 percent of Americans (including a majority of Republicans) said benefits “should not be reduced in any way.” Last month, in an AP-NORC poll, 67 percent of Americans said we’re spending “too little” on Social Security. Indeed, according to Gallup, 60 percent of beneficiaries say that Social Security is their “major source of income.”

It has long been axiomatic that you don’t mess with that money. Dwight Eisenhower knew this way back in 1954; in a letter to his brother, the Republican president wrote: “The federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it.” More than 50 years later, Republican operative Rich Galen told me the party’s sporadic attempts to cut or privatize Social Security always backfired: “We have a long history of getting the you-know-what kicked out of us.”

Consider 1964, when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater mused about making Social Security voluntary – i.e. no longer requiring workers to pay the taxes that fund the program. That stance helped fuel his landslide loss of 44 states.

And consider 2005, when Republican president George W. Bush went on the road to wow audiences with his plan to partially privatize the program. The more he talked, the worse he did. Gallup tracked the disaster. In February 2005, 50 percent of Americans said they disliked Bush’s brainstorm. Four months later, 62 percent signaled thumbs down.

And consider 2011, when Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry denounced Social Security as “a monstrous lie…a Ponzi scheme.” (Sound familiar?) Perry, briefly deemed the front-runner, ultimately tanked for a number of reasons — starting with the fact that he was a dolt — but burning his fingers on America’s third-rail issue was high on the list.

And consider 2022, when Florida Senator Rick Scott had the bright idea of sunsetting Social Security — in plain English, allowing the program to expire. Scott’s fellow Republicans in D.C., nervous about the midterm elections, were so horrified they compelled Scott to disavow his own pipe dream.

By the way: The “Ponzi scheme” mantra, resurrected by Musk, is particularly moronic. Charles Ponzi was a swindler who conned his investors by promising 100 percent returns within three months, all while keeping them in the dark. By contrast, the Social Security Administration publicly reports its finances, tracking how workers’ payroll taxes are converted into benefits.

I paid those taxes for 50 years so that seniors could reap the rewards. That’s been our social compact for nearly a century. Now it’s my turn to collect. Contrary to what Musk says, this is not an “entitlement,” a word which his ilk equates with welfare. We older folks earned our payments after funding the program our entire working lives.

So I hope Musk keeps flapping his yap. But if his deputy president wants to escape political damage, he should say this: “We must make greater and more successful efforts to strengthen Social Security…In so doing, we build for the future, and we prove to the watching world that a free nation can and will find the means, despite the tensions of these times, to progress toward a better society.”

So said Dwight Eisenhower in his 1954 message to Congress.

But why would MAGA listen to him? Ike fought against fascism, and he left suckers and losers in the soil of Normandy. For those sins alone, he’d surely tank in today’s Republican primaries.

Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]