Ramesh Ponnuru @ Bloomberg:
The Obama campaign wasted no time blasting Mitt Romney’s selection of Representative Paul Ryan as a running mate.
Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, had not finished his acceptance speech when PresidentBarack Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, released a statement blasting him for favoring “new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors.” Ryan’s “radical” budget plan, Messina added, “would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health-care costs to seniors.”
Romney could have run away from this fight. Plenty of Republicans have been telling him not to distract voters from their unhappiness about the economy by presenting far-reaching plans of his own — and especially not to elevate the issue of Medicare, on which Democrats traditionally have an advantage.
With Ryan’s selection, Romney has rejected this advice. As Messina’s statement shows, this campaign will now be about something big: the future of the welfare state.
The Democratic attack on Ryan and his budget plan is, at best, ignorant. “Budget-busting” tax cuts? The Ryan budget plan envisions taxes running at a higher level of GDP than the average of the last few decades. It brings the budget to long- term balance — something that Obama has never proposed. (As his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner admitted to Ryan in February: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”)
Ryan’s Medicare plan doesn’t put greater burdens on seniors or shift health-care costs to them, either. The Democrats’ criticism was arguably true of Ryan’s 2011 plan. The 2012 version of the plan — the one Romney endorsed — includes changes to meet that criticism. That’s how it won the support of Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Under the original Ryan plan, retirees would have chosen a private health plan and the government would have contributed money toward the cost. The amount of money would have depended on the beneficiary’s age and health status. Over time the average amount of money would have risen with inflation.
You’re right. It’s important because this election will determine the course of government for years to come. Namely whether a Republican authoritarian theocracy, or Democratic values of free thought and open debate, will prevail.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): Wow, you really have a lot of hate.
I don’t even know how to respond to you, Lib1. You are clearly off in some fantasy land with a girl with kaleidoscope eyes. “Democratic values of free thought and open debate” is just full of words that should never be together in the same sentence.
Just try going onto a liberal blog and voicing a contrary opinion, and you’ll see how the values of free thought and open debate will get you flamed, abused, cursed, and threatened.
The only “free thought” that is allowed in your world is thought that toes the liberal line.
Obama’s phony ”scoring” of ObamaCare was the ONLY reason it even looked somewhat OK on paper.
Turns out how it looked was a lie.
And ObamaCare was a takeover of 7% (minimum) of our entire economy just so that 30-40 million folks would be covered who are not today.
But guess what?
REAL scoring and real examination of ObamaCare shows us that 30 MILLION people will STILL NOT BE COVERED by ObamaCare!
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/24/cbo-obamacare-to-cover-millions-fewer-than-before-supreme-court-decision/
It was all just a power-grab.
Nothing improved for anyone.
This really is the most important election since 1980.
Obama came out Thurs in Pueblo, CO and admitted what he’d done to nationalize health care and the auto industry is EXACTLY what he intends to do to ALL the rest of our economy, if we give him 4 more years!
You know what I always remember when I read liberal trolls on this site? If this were a conservative on Kos or some other leftwing site…the administrator would delete the post. We don’t do that because we believe in free speech. I just laugh at the thought that a practicing Catholic like Ryan as VP would mean we have become a “theocracy”. These people are just silly. And by the way…in an Obama second term…just what would happen to freedom of speech? I think that’s an open question given the embrace of “hate speech” laws the left loves.
These folks don’t understand the Constitution…and see it as a horse-and-buggy document that must be gotten around. Look at who they are and what they believe…look at the anti-Romney lies they are running…even the liberal press is disgusted. They have no moral values…don’t believe in God…and think America as we know it should be ended. And if I were to post this on one of their sites…it would not last fifteen minutes.
That’s the difference between them and us.
Heh, Lib1 do you know what Hypocrite is? You are the bigot, not us.
Theocracy can not be a Republic, as it’s ruled by a singluar Divine leader apointed by “God” aka someone who ceases all power and forms an Oligarchy with Religous By-laws as the foundation. Then again lib, this shows you never really understood Governments and how they are formed.
That and you spew about being free minded and thinking, yet you turn around in blanat facist style and expect your opponents to shut up and be silenced? In a truly free society you can not go unchallenged with your plans, thoughts and motives nor are you promised an instant audience that is accepting of your message. Freedom of Speech means you have to deal with our ways of life as much as we have to deal with yours and frankly you want to be a Nazi or worse and support the notion of surpressing any means possible our ways of life. You are a sick little troll.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): This MUST be Greg in disguise. No one else could be so stupid. Socialist values do not and have not defined the spirit of America. 0-bama and Democrats have taken America down a dark path of ruin. The FACTS speak for themselves vs the rhetoric. FACTS include our failed economy, jobs, national debt, war on business, and the most disgusting negative attack in politics that America has ever witnessed. If you going to come in this site with such garbage be prepared to be mocked and defined as the wacho you are!!
Nah, Liberal1 is just a troll who likes to spout stupidity to get a rise out of us and get us to waste time responding to him. Greg at least sometimes follows up, where this guy just does his drive by posts and never bothers to read anyone’s responses.
Getting back on topic, love the Ryan pick. Romney is sending the message that he’s serious about the economy.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
give me a break. voting for barry is a vote for communism. do some research on what he would do he was re elected and not worried about another tern. He will conducting his own “New Deal”-style overhaul of the economy replete with the creation of a National Infrastructure Development Bank to oversee government control of the financial system; a massive, government-run jobs program to coincide with “paycheck fairness”; full amnesty for illegal aliens; de-funding of the U.S. military while channeling Pentagon money to “clean” energy initiatives; a new, multi-billion dollar “green” stimulus; and implementing Obamacare in measures nearly impossible to reverse. Yep if this is what you want, you probably need to move to cuba, france, bolivia or russia. They have the type of government you want. I for one do not.
As far as barry debasing Paul Ryan – that is because he is afraid of him, and he needs to be. barry’s non existent background is being dug up, more and more people want to know how he went to prestigious schools (probably as a foreign student which IF he was born in Hawaii obviously lied), and now see him for what he is, no longer a marxist but a pure communist, and the enemy of this country and a big fat LIAR.
VoteOutIncombents
HI,
that is a very good argument, and yes the difference jump before our eyes,
they have no morality, they can destroy so to win and they are doing it as we speak,
who want to vote for for a low class citizen who had a chance to become better while learning of the laws of the land and having to face the most tolerant and bravest humans of this PLANET.
but he did not learn anything about AMERICA, NO,
INSTEAD HE TRY TO DESTROY THE BEST OF IT’S VALUES, HE SHOWED HIS HATE FOR THIS COUNTRY BY DIVIDING THE PEOPLE AND INCITE THEM TO HATE EACH OTHER LIKE HE DOES.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
There has been free thought and open debate in the last four years? I have to admit, I must have dozed off.
@Aqua:
The Liberal One must have missed al those statement out of the LEFT when Obama, his surrogates and Dems in both houses of Congress would say, “the time for debate is OVER.”
We must have heard that nugget over 20 different issues and hundreds of times so that we silly opponents would start to believe it.
Repeat a lie often enough and some people do believe it.
See Lib 1 above for proof.