Hypocrisy and Reform

The Republican Party has put itself in a terrible bind over entitlement spending. On the one hand, they want to shrink the government, or at least limit its growth, and that can't be done without limiting entitlements. On the other hand, they depend entirely on the votes of people over 55, and they have positioned themselves as the defenders of older people against "death panels" and other threats. Hence they produce incoherence like these two tweets from Senator Orrin Hatch:

Via Matt Yglesias.