The unopposed Republican candidate in Colorado’s 7^th Congressional District, Rick O’Donnell, attempted Monday to get in front of anticipated attacks over a 1995 article he wrote as an editor of Newt Gingrich’s American Civilization that advocated the abolition of Social Security.  He acknowledged that he wrote the article, but said his thinking had changed since then and as a 24-year-old he had not yet “thought through the moral commitment we've made to retirees.”

The very public airing of O’Donnell’s feelings on the issue raises the stakes in a race commentators already believe is among the most competitive House races in the country.

O’Donnell, whose opponent will be the winner of a hotly contested three-way Democratic primary, supports “personal accounts” like those suggested by President Bush in his push early last year to reform the program.  Bush and his advisors have said that another try to overhaul the program would be on the agenda if Republicans maintain control of Congress in November.

Unfortunately for O’Donnell, the article he wrote – passages of which read as harshly as you’d expect a polemic against the welfare state at the height of the Contract With America era would – could turn out to be the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrat that faces him.

Americans should know that Social Security “won’t be there for them,” says the article, and it should be replaced with a “mandatory, private savings scheme.”  More damning is a general statement on government entitlement programs.  “There is an even more important moral question raised by the government's role as chief provider in old age.  It sends the un-American message that it is not your responsibility to take care of yourself.

"O’Donnell says he “diagnosed the problem accurately” in the article, but he “gave the wrong prescription,” and that Bush “bungled” his attempts at Social Security reform.

It is unclear exactly what differences O’Donnell sees between the personal accounts he’s advocating now and the “mandatory, private savings scheme” he advocated then.

The president is scheduled to speak at an O’Donnell fundraiser July 21.