Senator Rick Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership,...is campaigning across his state this week, trying to get young people to focus on their retirement.
At Widener University in Chester on Tuesday afternoon, people over 50 occupied perhaps half the seats at a forum held by Mr. Santorum and asked many of the questions - most of them negative.
At one point, Mr. Santorum looked out at the raised hands and said somewhat plaintively: "I'm seeing a lot of older hands. I'm not seeing any younger hands."
And still they kept coming, the "older hands," with questions that were not really questions.
As both parties take stock of the grass roots on Social Security during this Congressional recess, Pennsylvania underscores the political challenge for Republicans. It is a state with a disproportionate number of older Americans; 15.6 percent of the population was over 65 in the 2000 census, a number exceeded only by Florida.
Social Security has been an important subject here in the past, and Mr. Bush's plan to overhaul it by including private accounts is "a tough issue," said G. Terry Madonna, a professor of public policy at Franklin and Marshall College.
Mr. Santorum is up for re-election in 2006, and a recent poll suggests that he could face an extremely competitive race. He acknowledged somewhat ruefully on Tuesday afternoon that "we'd suffer no electoral consequences for doing nothing" on Social Security.
It will be good to get "man on dog" Santorum out of the Senate.
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