It must be campaign season! GOP candidates, under Karl Rove’s tutelage, have doubled-down on their Medicare and Social Security dodge and deflect strategy. The heart of this political strategy is to avoid talking about GOP candidates’ true plans for Social Security and Medicare while simultaneously portraying their opponents as the “enemies of seniors.”

Greg Sargent offers this perspective:

“It is remarkable to watch Rove’s group try to position multiple Democratic Senators as the real threat to social insurance for the elderly, for the third straight cycle — and even more intriguingly, to use Simpson Bowles to do so. After all, Simpson Bowles is still widely treated as a paragon of unimpeachable fiscally responsible centrism, and Dems have long been pilloried by Beltway fiscal scold types for refusing to embrace its sanctified prescriptions for deficit reduction.

Indeed, this sort of Crossroads rhetoric should outrage fiscal conservatives. As Philip Klein put it in a post slamming Crossroads’ ad against Mark Pryor: ‘if Republicans want to be a limited government party, they have to be making the case for reforming entitlements — not running ads attacking Democrats from the left.’ “

As a reminder, Simpson Bowles is the Wall Street backed plan which would raise the retirement age, change the Social Security formula to cut benefits by 5%-30% while also changing the COLA formula to cut benefits for both current and future retirees.  Simpson Bowles has been touted by conservatives and centrists as a “balanced plan” even though it imposes 75% in benefit cuts (largely on the middle class) and only 25% in revenue increases.   How incredibly cynical for Karl Rove and crew to attempt yet another rewrite of history on behalf of his GOP congressional clients, most of whom would not only support Simpson-Bowles but also the GOP/Ryan budget which would be especially devastating to Social Security and Medicare.

So, as you will inevitably see these ads make their way onto your local channels, here’s what you need to remember about the GOP campaign strategy on Social Security and Medicare from their 2012 playbook and our blog post back then:

A memo and campaign how-to video from the National Republican Congressional Committee provides an incredibly clear and cynical look behind their political curtain, as the NRCC gives Republican candidates tips on how to dodge the discussion they really don’t want to have about the votes they’ve already cast on Medicare:

“Do not say: ‘entitlement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’ … Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’”  NRCC Memo

It’s up to voters to ask the right questions.  That happened in New York with GOP candidate  Elise Stefanik and hilarity ensued: