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thatcrazycajunBy now, most of you reading this will have heard that this year's presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, yesterday finally ended months of speculation on the part of pols and pundits alike by announcing his choice of a running mate. At a rally in Norfolk, VA, with the museum ship USS Wisconsin serving as a carefully-chosen backdrop, he unveiled the man he thinks should be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world: Rep. Paul Ryan, who in recent months has become both the Badger State's leading political figure and a rock star with movement conservatives and Tea Party types, largely due to his controversial budget proposal earlier this year.
As reported by The New York Times today, Romney had this to say about his newly-anointed sidekick: "There are a lot of people in the other party who might disagree with Paul Ryan. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t respect his character and judgment.” Speaking as a registered Democrat, allow me to offer what I believe is my party's carefully calibrated, consensus response to that statement...
Anyone who has actually read Ryan's budget proposal and knows what it contains has ample reason to question both his judgment—if he truly believes that more of the same social-program-whacking, defense-budget-bloating, wealth-worshiping-tax-cuts snake-oil medicine the GOP has been peddling for years now really will goose a staggering economy and produce jobs this time, despite more than a decade's worth of evidence to the contrary—and his character, if you believe as many religious activists on both sides do that government budgets are moral documents as much as fiscal ones.
If Romney thinks this is what will push his struggling campaign back onto the rails, he's an even bigger idiot than I already thought—which is pretty damn big. This may well be a game-changer, albeit not the kind he hopes for...but more likely in the same way picking Sarah Palin changed the game for Sen. John McCain four years ago, to his everlasting chagrin. From the McClatchy Newspapers blog Planet Washington:
"This is a major unforced error by Mitt Romney," said committee co-founder Adam Green. "It gives the President and Democrats a chance to draw a clear contrast in 2012 by promising not to cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security benefits. If Democrats win in a landslide, this was the game changer."
Here's what picking Ryan really means: Even after clinching the nomination, and hanging onto narrowly competitive polling numbers despite being a veritable non-stop gaffe factory, Romney still hasn't managed to "close the deal" with the hard-core right-wingers that make up his party's base. The reasoning for both the choice and its timing—barely two weeks before the party's convention in Tampa, FL—should have been obvious once word got out that Ryan was on the short list along with Ohio's Rob Portman, Florida's Marco Rubio and Mitt's former opponent for the nomination (however briefly), Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty.
Choosing Ryan as much as announces that the Tea Party has the Mittster by the short-and-curlies, and he desperately needs them to get enthusiastically on board in time for his Tampa coronation—and mobilize for him afterward in the run-up to Election Day—if he is to have a sno-ball's chance in New Orleans on Jazzfest weekend of beating President Barack Obama. The only problem with this strategy? While it may—emphasize, may—finally win over the wingnuts, it's guaranteed to alienate the independents and moderates he will also need just as badly to win.
By picking Ryan, he's practically written off the entire state of Florida already, with its huge senior population so dependent on the Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid programs Ryan's proposed budget would endanger. All Obama and his campaign staff have to do is keep repeating these three words from now to November 6th: "Romney-Ryan budget." You've heard perhaps that the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission Obama convened last year was often referred to as "the Catfood Commission" because it was (and still is) widely accepted conventional wisdom that no serious deficit reduction can happen absent drastic reductions in these ginormous entitlement programs, leaving the elderly to subsist on cans of you-know-what. With his own proposals, Ryan has marked himself (and now, Romney) as "the Catfood Candidates."
My final analysis? While this by no means indicates Democrats and progressives should get cocky about their chances of winning and slack off on the hard work already planned for the next couple of months, I do think it would behoove the Administration to send Mittens a nice, big fruit gift basket at his campaign offices sometime this week, with a card reading: "Dear Mitt: Thanks so much for picking Paul Ryan. Hope you can both make it to my second inauguration in January. Love, Barack."
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Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-12 07:54 pm (UTC)A tax plan that defies the rules of math
Ludicrous and cruel
Fiscal phonies
"As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year... So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?
None. Not one...
So what are we to make of this proposal? Mr. Gleckman calls it a mystery meat budget, but he’s being unfair to mystery meat."
Choosing Ryan as much as announces that the Tea Party has the Mittster by the short-and-curlies, and he desperately needs them to get enthusiastically on board.
Yes.
But beware: There are few true independents, and fewer still who vote, so mobilizing the base is often a winning strategy.
Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-12 08:17 pm (UTC)I'm not confident about this election and I won't be until it's in the bag. But I do think Ryan will represent a net loss instead of a net gain. The people he's meant to turn out would've turned out already, because they hate Obama. The man I was really afraid of was Portman, because he's from Ohio and he can be spun as moderate when he isn't.
Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-12 10:21 pm (UTC)Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-12 10:33 pm (UTC)Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-13 12:15 am (UTC)Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-13 12:18 am (UTC)Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-13 12:23 am (UTC)Sorry. Just in simple terms, do you think the country is better off now than it was 4 years ago? Our deficit now stands at 15T and the only reason our currency hasn't collapsed is because Europe's is collapsing faster. Businesses cannot function with the uncertainty, congress is deadlocked (which is NOT Obama's fault) and significant numbers of appointments went unfilled for too long. I'm not impressed.
Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-13 12:51 am (UTC)There's no uncertainty stopping business from functioning; the major corporations are simply throwing a tantrum in order to get what they want out of government. The stock market is at record highs, and so are corporate profits in every sector. The only reason it's not affecting the common folk is that the corporate heads never had any intention of allowing it to affect the common folk -- 90% of all economic growth in the last four years (and that growth is considerable) has gone only to the top 1%.
You point out the budget deficit. Romney and Ryan want to increase that deficit by offering record tax breaks to their own class, and dismantling the social safety net in order to pay for it... in part. The rest of it gets paid for by raising taxes on the middle class by $2,000 per family. You'd think someone who cared about the deficit would be interested in raising revenue, but he isn't, because he doesn't -- what he cares about is making sure his own income isn't taxed, no matter what the costs to the rest of us.
So no, I'm not going to make it easier for Romney to get what he wants, because all he wants is money and power. He's never cared about what happens to this country; he wants to loot it the way he's been looting corporation after corporation in the business record he now says we shouldn't be allowed to ask him about, since the questions got tough.
The reason things are only marginally better than they were four years ago (and I do think they are marginally better, and will be more so when the biggest provisions of the ACA get underway) is that the Republican Party and its corporate sponsors have been throwing the biggest temper tantrum of our time, holding the country's collective breath -- legislative and economic -- until we turn blue in order to try and get a decent man out of office so they can plunder the United States without interference. But I don't see plunder as the proper function of government, and I don't give way to tantrums.
If you seriously want to improve the country and take away the "uncertainty," don't vote for Romney, and don't just vote for Obama and then sit back and watch. Vote for Obama and work to elect ever decent progressive available to Congress, and watch for the local ones coming up through the state houses and school boards, so that the blackmail we're seeing doesn't have a chance to succeed. Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Darcy Burner (who lost her primary, but will still be around two years from now), Rob Zerban, Bernie Sanders, Maizi Hirono, Tammy Duckworth. These, and the others like them, are the people who will break the stranglehold currently blocking progress; not the likes of Romney and Ryan. They'll just make things worse in as much of a hurry as they possibly can.
Re: Some articles on Paul Ryan's budget plan
Date: 2012-08-13 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-12 09:20 pm (UTC)And, by the way, the politics of the democratic party have alienated me to a point where I'll be seeking an alternative. I'm starting (or joining, if there already is one) a Green in '16 movement. This country needs some real change, and a thriving progressive party would be a good step in the left direction.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 12:18 am (UTC)