it s just the republican party is not willing to claim victory yet. let me give you an illustration what i m talking about because it s from the garden state. there seems to be a lack of quality control in the republican party when it comes to candidates. just look at new jersey. a state that republicans have eyed for a long time. this is the candidate than primary voters have chosen to run against cory booker in the state s special election for senate. his name is steve lonegan. he opposes marriage equality. if you couldn t tell from that will photograph we just showed, he s against gun control. he s anti-abortion even in cases of rape and incest. he wants to dismantle the irs. a hard liner on immigration and wants to make glisht official language and rejeks climate change. a recent buzz feed of lonegan summarized him like this, he called social security a ponzi scheme, advocates for the des construction of medicare and medicaid, denounces spanish ad as and describes cory booker
rhoades was asked whether his candidate had gone too far to the right on immigration when challenged by texas governor rick perry and whether he had any regret about that. rhoades brings up the romney attacks on perry for calling social security a ponzi scheme and says he now feels that would have been enough to defeat perry. he says he didn t need to take the hard right stance on immigration. let s listen to this. here it is. i regret that i truly believe that people were shocked that we were going after governor perry in a republican primary on social security. they were critical of us at the time saying we were hitting him from the left, and, you know, if you look through the unwinding of the perry campaign, a lot of people put a focus on that one infamous debate moment, but it was the very early debates, the first and second debates, and by the third debate, and this is well before the other moment, i
new. you see the party pandering with a very extreme almost to the american party. and willing to say one thing, but then when they get caught, as you said, they backtrack and they try to move back to the center. what we need are representatives in washington, d.c. who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. unfortunately i don t think that s what we re seeing with representative coffman or gardener in this case. for people around the country to know his resumé, he was elected to congress in 2008. supports the personhood amendment, calls social security a ponzi scheme, and wants english only ballots for voters. included in his apology, he says president obama s policies reflect a philosophy that
amount of money high income retirees get. newt gingrich originally called the ryan plan too radical but more recently he walked back his criticism. he said he d back the bulk of those changes. ron paul believes that social security is unconstitutional but should be maintained for the time being to benefit seniors who count on it. he also thinks that young americans should be able to withdraw from social security and make their own investments. rick perry has called social security a ponzi scheme and a failure. he believes states ought to be able to opt out of social security and design their own programs and he backs gradually raising the retirement age. tomorrow we re going to be taking a hard look at where the candidates stand on another hot button issue. we re going to talk about immigration. that is at 11:00 eastern in the cnn newsroom.
social security a ponzi scheme. but tell us the state of social security. andrea: social security used to run a surplus. now it s in the red permanently. everybody knows when you pay the payroll tax, half goes to fica and the other goes to the social security trust fund. lawmakers have been raiding the trust fund on the right and the left for years. they put ious in it, ious they will never ever be able to pay back. that is why when you have someone like rick perry or a newt gingrich who said private accounts, if i have a private account now, i wouldn t care what the bums are doing in d.c. they couldn t touch my money. this is why, though, it s such an important issue. think what the president did. he just took it s not raidal it what they just did. they are just not funding it. eric: juan, they made a political battle. it was right versus left. one side that used to like lower taxes is fighting for not extending the taxes. they made at it partisan battle. the bottom line, social