It’s a tried and true method in political campaigns – scare senior citizens into believing that their benefits are going to be reduced or taken away and that your opponent is the horrible dude who will lead the way in gutting those benefits if he/she is elected.  For good measure, throw in the word “privatization” and senior citizens will spring out of their comfy chairs to get to the polls like an Olympic diver in the three meter springboard competition.Why scare those lovable senior citizens?  Because senior citizens vote – they actually show up on Election Day and vote and if you have them scared enough, they will tell their friends down at the senior center, at their churches, and during their weekly bridge game to show up and vote, too.

Just when we thought that senior citizens and Social Security were dead issues (both the Denny Rehberg (R) and Jon Tester (D) for Senate campaign sites are pretty slim in the issue area regarding Social Security and senior citizens) the Tester campaign finds a jewel (for them) from a 1996 U.S. Senate debate where a somewhat cocky candidate Denny Rehberg says, “When I talk about ending Social Security as we know it, I do mean that.”  Then the Tester camp has Rehberg repeat “ending Social Security as we know it, I do mean that” a few times.  Tester throws in “Dennis Rehberg is breaking Social Security’s sacred promise” and that Rehberg voted for “5 pay raises” and Rehberg is “protecting tax breaks for multi-millionaires, like himself” just to seal the deal with senior citizen voters.

Several pundits have said that incumbent Jon Tester is running a pretty good campaign against his top challenger, Congressman Denny Rehberg.  So far the race seems pretty even and ads like the one above may give Tester some momentum during the dog days of August – and force the Rehberg campaign to play defense once again…

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