Mitt Romney has decided to make a ruckus out of Rick Perry’s insistence that Social Security is a “Ponzi Scheme”. In a flier disseminated to Republican voters in Florida, the Romney campaign asserts “Rick Perry: How can we trust anyone who wants to kill social security.” Here’s a snippet from the flier:

It’s no secret that Mitt Romney is going to use Perry’s remarks on Social Security until his last dying breath. Despite any of Perry’s insistence that he is only using tough rhetoric to prompt a discussion about the future of Social Security, such a strong and misrepresenting view will not play out well for the majority of Americans. The label of “Ponzi Scheme” most notoriously evokes the recollection of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that swindled thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. Naturally, for those who were victim to Madoff, it was Social Security itself that provided a final safety net to otherwise complete financial ruin.

Nevertheless, Romney has his own Social Security ghosts which will continue to haunt him. During President Bush’s push to “privatize” Social Security throughout his second term, Romney openly supported the idea,

“The two major paths that we have is one, to raise taxes on people, which I don’t want to do. And the other is to allow some portion of people’s money that they’re now having taken out of their salaries to be invested in Social Security.”

When a female attendee stated that his plan was “privatization,” Romney offered a different term. “You call it privatization, I call it a private account.”

Clearly, Mitt Romney was against Social Security before he was for it. But that’s the same old tune we’ve heard him whistle for every policy issue that he has flip-flopped on (i.e. healthcare, abortion, etc..) in order to pander to whomever he is trying to gain support.