Sunday, August 12, 2012

Ryan energizes the campaign



What’s New Today

Story # 1 and #2 are today’s signs of desperation by the Obama Administration.  #3 and #4 are stories of Paul Ryan.  It appears he’s making a difference already.  #5 looks at Medicare.  Expect to read a lot about it with lies and half-truths coming from the current administration. #6 is about the greens finally telling the truth.  They are opposed to any kind of energy.  

Today’s Thoughts

Paul Ryan represents Obama’s most horrifying nightmare: Math.”

Democrats seem to be happy with Romney’s pick as they consider Ryan to be an extremist on budget issues.  Since when is balancing a budget and extremist view?


1.   Signs of Desperation

Email from Joe Biden:

“Starting now, we can expect even more wealthy, right-wing ideologues lining up to support the Romney-Ryan ticket” 

The people on the other side who are trying to buy this election are putting nasty, deceptive TV ads on the air right this very minute. They're not going away. They're getting worse.

If we don't do what we can to keep this close, right now at this crucial moment, we risk letting the other side run away with it.

"Keep this close?" I say. "They're posing as if they think they are already behind."…

They know they are in trouble.

2.  Signs of Desperation part 2

Romney did a great job responding to a heckler, then turned it on Obama telling him to get his campaign out of the gutter. Fantastic.


It’s only a two minute video and worth watching.  It is exactly as the author characterized Romney’s response. 


3.  Ryan:  Inside Information

As they took their first steps together on the campaign trail today, it was revealed that Paul Ryan's path to becoming Mitt Romney's Republican vice-presidential running mate was steeped in secrecy, from an incognito trip to meet Romney to a furtive walk through the woods at his boyhood Wisconsin home.
The head of Romney's VP search process, longtime confidante Beth Myers, broke her silence on many details in a briefing with reporters inside a hangar at Dulles International Airport near Washington. Romney and Ryan themselves spoke to reporters briefly on their flight to North Carolina.
Almost a week ago, Ryan snuck through Chicago's O'Hare airport in a baseball cap and sunglasses and flew to New England

Myer's 19-year-old son picked up Ryan and drove him to a private meeting in his parents' dining room where the deal was sealed.

By Friday afternoon, Ryan was cutting through the Wisconsin woods behind his home to evade a reporter on the street out front, and heading to North Carolina. 

By night, he was eating Applebee's takeout at a nondescript chain hotel in that state and preparing for his big debut speech, according to Myers.

The search for VP was so confidential that background information on a short list of candidates, including several years of tax returns and other documents, were kept in a safe in a locked room at Romney's campaign headquarters and the few people allowed in were not permitted to make copies or take anything out….

A good start here as the decision, made last week, didn’t leak out.  



4.  Ryan energizes the Romney campaign

Newly minted vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan hit the stump this weekend with a level of energy that seemed to boost Mitt Romney’s entire campaign, giving the presumptive nominee a much-needed change in the narrative while adding another high-profile fundraiser and campaigner to deploy across the country.

It got off to an inauspicious start, though.

When Mr. Ryan was first introduced Saturday in Norfolk, Va., walking down the gangplank of the USS Wisconsin with the theme of the movie “Air Force One” playing in the background, Mr. Romney’s got a little ahead of himself, introducing Mr. Ryan as “the next president of the United States.”
Mr. Romney quickly corrected the slip-up, saying he had been known to make mistakes, “but I didn’t make one with this guy.”

Mr. Ryan showed a clear ability to connect with voters and infuse Mr. Romney’s campaign with, quite literally, a dash of youthful energy. At 42, Mr. Ryan is the same age as Mr. Romney’s eldest son, Tagg…
.

Ryan brings a target of opportunity to the Democrats, but also a huge risk to them.  They are counting on the American public being ignorant of the problems with entitlements and how the Democrats and  President Obama has done absolutely nothing to address them.    


5.  Medicare:  It’s already ended as we know it

Liberals and Democrats these days like to believe that the Right and the Republican Party can be safely ignored. Obama and his allies argue that balance in media can be responsibly eschewed, because conservatives are inherently closed-minded, and the GOP, unlike the Democratic Party, is thoroughly unserious and dishonest.

I wonder if even the most strident and self-satisfied of these liberals -- to wit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman -- can maintain this self-serving posture when Joe Biden debates Paul Ryan this fall.
When Mitt Romney chose Ryan this weekend as his running mate, the liberal freak out was telling. Attacking the budgets Ryan authored, they have trotted out the hoary line that Ryan would "eliminate Medicare," and push grannie off a cliff.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina wrote that Ryan's "plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors."
The "end Medicare as we know it" mantra highlights two ways in which it is the Democratic Party that is deeply unserious.

First, it echoes Obama's mendacity. Second, it reflects the party's irresponsible insistence on looking the other way while driving our government full speed toward the cliff of insolvency
.
Ryan's budget would not change anything about Medicare for people over age 54 or anyone younger who wants to go onto traditional Medicare. Ryan's plan, crafted with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden -- who earns gushing praise from self-styled wonks on the Left as a serious legislator (which he is) -- merely allows some people to opt instead for a voucherized version of Medicare.

So Democrats assert that Ryan-Wyden would "end Medicare as we know it," because any modification of any existing policy would "end" that policy "as we know it."

This slippery charge is Team Obama's standard rhetorical tack: Say something clearly misleading, but with one potential interpretation that could be construed as not a lie.

The Democratic alternative to Ryan's Medicare reform, meanwhile is, well, nothing…


Actually the response is not nothing.  Buried in Obamacare is the creation of the IPAB, a 15 member board that would have the power to reduce reimbursements on any and all Medicare covered procedures.  In fact, the IPAB and Obamacare have ended Medicare as we know it starting in 2014.  The Ryan Plan would affect new seniors going on to Medicare in 2024.  The two plans let you choose what you want to be insured against (Ryan) or lets a board choose what you will be insured against (Obamacare).  Add to this the fact that Obamacare relies on taking $500,000,000,000 out of Medicare to pay for the added people covered by Obamacare.


6.  Dedevelopment:  The Greens start to tell the real truth

…For years, the green argument was something like this: If only we can replace fossil fuels with cleaner, renewable energy sources, we can enjoy our current standard of living without endangering the environment. Now it appears some greens have advanced the argument to a brand new phase: It’s as if they’ve replaced a green energy policy with a no-energy policy.


This is an example of where the left will take us.  Certainly Hope and Change ended up in recessions and despair.  Progressives have actually become Regressives. 

No comments:

Post a Comment