Josh Marshall has done a great job of following the ongoing story of the Republicans’ flight from the now dirty word privatization. Anyone who pays attention to politics at all remembers not long ago when the Republican party proudly endorsed partial privatization of Social Security. Now, not only do they fear the word, they protest any time the media or their opponents refer to their plans as privatization. The real irony is in the fact that the policies the Republicans endorse have hardly changed – they still want to privatize Social Security, they just don’t want to call it that any more.