Just a day after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) called the President's Social Security plan "a dead horse," yet another leading Republican indicated that the proposal will not come to fruition. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman writes,

A key House Republican leader on Social Security said yesterday he has begun exploring ways to finance a restructured Social Security system other than through diverting payroll taxes from current beneficiaries.

The comments by Rep. Jim McCrery (La.), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, signaled a significant step away from President Bush's Social Security plans. And they fleshed out a point alluded to by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) on Tuesday: To break the partisan stalemate on Social Security, Republicans may have to finance their proposed personal investment accounts through some mechanism other than the 12.4 percent Social Security tax.

Expanding the scope of the conflict can, at times, enhance the chances that a given piece of legislation will pass. The 1986 tax reform bill, which is often cited as one of the greatest legislative successes in recent memory, began as a bid to reform one segment of taxation before being expanded to affect most areas of taxation. In many cases, though, this is not the case.

By bringing in so-called "tax reform" -- which in reality is a bid to rid the nation of progressive taxation -- the GOP could make their Social Security bill so controversial that it becomes completely unpassable. This goes beyond overreaching. By making a bill so large and complicated, opposition to any given part could inhibit passage of the entire bill.

In reality the President has put his party in a very difficult situation. The expectations are that he will be able to enact sweeping legislation, and anything short of an overhaul of both Social Security and the tax code will not be viewed as a complete success (given his "mandate"). What's more, the Democrats have no incentive whatsoever to comply with the Republicans because their party can gain no political clout from these policies' implementation and, above all, the American people do not support these measures.

The GOP is running scared right now (read Josh Marshall's take on this) but they don't have anywhere to turn. The Democrats ought to let them rile a little longer before doing anything too rash. It might not be a time to gloat, but it's certainly not a time to excessively fret, either.