Veep announcement [Romney picks Paul Ryan]

[BobLibDem]

@Voyager

But they have children. One point - my father-in-law, who is 96 and a lifelong Republican, is voting for Obama. He didn’t like Romney - he likes Ryan less. And he lives in Pennsylvania so his vote counts unlike my California one.

Take care of the dear gentleman. Hope he lives to carry Pennsylvania for Obama in '12, then Hillary in '16 and '20.

[Voyager]

@jtgain

As I said earlier, your contentions can and will be debated in other threads. If Obama can convince voters that Paul Ryan wants to do the things you described, then he wins.

If Romney and Ryan can convince voters that his plan will balance the budget while providing seniors with superior health care, give tax relief to job creators, protect us from terrorists, and trimming unnecessary federal programs, then they win.

Game on.

It has been well accepted for a while that presidential candidates can’t get too specific, first because 30 point plans are boring but mostly because it gives their opponents a target. Romney has followed this, saying for example he would close unspecified loopholes. But as you said upthread Ryan changes all that. It will not go well.

The Times today had an article on the taxes of the top 400 earners in the country. Several paid 0. At least half paid in the teens. I think when it becomes better known how little the “job creators” pay already cutting their already low taxes will be even less popular.

[Voyager]

@BobLibDem

Take care of the dear gentleman. Hope he lives to carry Pennsylvania for Obama in '12, then Hillary in '16 and '20.

He just had an operation - and went shopping to Target two days later! And he is still trading stocks and making money. He’ll be voting.

[John_Mace]

@Fear_Itself

For that matter, when was the last time a Black president was re-elected?

Let me do some research and get back you on that one…

[GIGObuster]

Regarding the healthcare issue ontheissues.org reports these recent votes from Paul Ryan regarding health care:

Paul Ryan on the Issues

Voted NO on regulating tobacco as a drug. (Apr 2009)
Voted NO on expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program. (Jan 2009)
Voted YES on overriding veto on expansion of Medicare. (Jul 2008)
Voted NO on giving mental health full equity with physical health. (Mar 2008)

Now that particular last NO is one strong beef I have against him, as a supporter of gun rights (yeah there are liberals like that) I still do think that it is insane to allow the current joke system of the mental health care that we have in America to continue, because at the same time we have less gun control and we are doing a pitiful job of helping and identifying the people that should not have access to weapons.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Stratocaster

I agree with this. This country has hard choices to make regarding entitlements, if we are to avoid becoming another Greece. Enough of the imbecilic “strategies” from both sides (from the Right: “Let’s cut waste!”; from the Left: “Let’s tax the rich!”) that are painless (to most voters) and ineffective on their own. To say the least.

Yet another person who seems to have missed the fact that democrats have cut spending. The equivocation between “Let’s cut waste” on the right and “Let’s raise taxes” on the left is simply false, without additional information. Remember, the republican party as a whole is against any tax increases, whereas the democrats have been entirely willing to cut spending.

[UltraVires]

@Voyager

It has been well accepted for a while that presidential candidates can’t get too specific, first because 30 point plans are boring but mostly because it gives their opponents a target. Romney has followed this, saying for example he would close unspecified loopholes. But as you said upthread Ryan changes all that. It will not go well.

The Times today had an article on the taxes of the top 400 earners in the country. Several paid 0. At least half paid in the teens. I think when it becomes better known how little the “job creators” pay already cutting their already low taxes will be even less popular.

It’s all about framing the issue and this puts Romney on offense and Obama on defense. This is not a tax cut. This is keeping tax rates at their current levels so as not to raise taxes on job creators when unemployment is above 8%.

Yes, we have a boring 30 point plan, but please read it. It will take you more time to read than Obama’s plan. Why? Because he’s got nothin’. Nothing but criticism at our plan. Let him put a plan out there that saves entitlements and gets our financial house in order.

Can they pull it off? It remains to be seen. Reagan always did it well, but Mitt or Paul Ryan are not Ronald Reagan. If they can get Obama out of his element and make him be specific, then they stop his “we are doing well based on what we were given” meme.

It changes the dynamics of the race and is something that Romney sorely needs. McCain had the same dilemma when he picked Palin. It didn’t work for McCain, but since he was losing anyways, he took a shot. Romney is doing the same thing and maybe it will work out for him. Paul Ryan doesn’t come across as a scary guy like Newt Gingrich.

[aceplace57]

Ryan has legislative experience. That’s a plus. Romney has no Federal experience at all.

Ryan’s extreme views about privatizing social security and changing medicare will scare the hell out of the seniors. He scares me too and I’m not 50 yet. He’s pretty typical of the tea party.

Paul Ryan

As an alternative to the 2012 budget proposal of President Barack Obama, Ryan introduced a plan, The Path to Prosperity, in April 2011 which included significant changes to Medicare. He then helped introduce the similar The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal in March 2012, in response to Obama’s 2013 budget.

[GIGObuster]

Ryan is also in favor of personhood.

http://parentsagainstpersonhood.com/2012/08/11/vp-nominee-paul-ryan-is-personhood-advocate/

In 2011, Rep. Ryan co-sponsored HR 212, the “Sanctity of Human Life Act”, whose text specifies that “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood” apply to embryos beginning at fertilization.

The Ryan selection is also perhaps an unwise move for a GOP candidate who hopes to win swing state Colorado, where congressional candidates are busily disavowing their past support for personhood. Recent Colorado polling results on personhood indicate that not only is personhood projected to lose by a heavy margin, but that voters are ready to punish candidates who support it.

[adaher]

@Enkel

Don’t forget that a lot of current recipients have children. So, just because they aren’t personally affected (except for the case that can be made that once they go to the voucher system, what’s to stop them from going further the next year), many wouldn’t want their children to be screwed over.

I hope the idea of removing the income cap on SS tax is brought up in the campaign. If they simply removed that income cap (and treated capital gains as income), then SS wouldn’t have any problems.

The problem with that is that it fundamentally transforms Social Security to a welfare program, unless you also remove the cap on benefits. If everyone making past the cap is paying in a lot more than they get out, there goes the nearly universal support Social Security enjoys.

Why not just take the simpler approach and means test? You get the same result.

[2ManyTacos]

It’s funny how the Romney campaign strategy has evolved as time has gone on.

1. First, it was supposed to be a referendum on the president…but at the end of the day, people just like Obama more than Romney, period.

2. Second, it became a race against the president’s economic record…but that hasn’t worked out because people have already factored the sluggish economy into their election outlook.

3. Then, it became a battle based on outright lies and misinformation (“You didn’t build that,” gutting welfare reform, etc.)…but that doesn’t register because those pesky facts get in the way.

And now, with Ryan on the ticket, it has definitively become a race about fucking entitlements, of all things. Funny how this shit works.

[Love_Rhombus]

@Frostillicus

For a second, i thought you said Ayn Rand has been confirmed as Romney’s choice. And in a way, I was right.

You too? For a few moments when I first read the news, I really thought it said Rand Paul. No idea why.

[ElvisL1ves]

@John_Mace

When was the last time an incumbent president was re-elected with > 8% unemployment?

When was the last time a Republican nominee had underwater approval ratings? Never in the history of modern polling.

[GIGObuster]

Heh, I also like the take in Reddit:

People weren’t sure how sincere Mitt Romney was about screwing the poor and middle class, because his positions are so malleable, so he picked Paul Ryan to prove he really means it.

[RTFirefly]

@jtgain

I guess its good for the GOP that the worst thing they have on Ryan so far is the climate change thing.

Nah, that’s a distant second. When a guy’s name is practically Paul Ryan Budget, I think you can guess what #1 is.

@jtgain

That’s not what he said. He was talking about the concept of natural law; that rights don’t come from government but from nature or from God. It’s in the Declaration of Independence. It’s hardly radical. It’s not even religious because many atheists agree with the concept that some rights are simply inherent and that any government that opposes them are evil.

Either way, we can’t consult with either God or nature to determine what rights (besides life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, of course) are inalienable, and which are really just privileges that can be done away with. That’s why we have a Constitutionally based system of law.

[adaher]

@ElvisL1ves

When was the last time a Republican nominee had underwater approval ratings?

Not all polls show him underwater. And if his losing is a sure thing, then the election polls should already show that.

BTW, when was the last President to be reelected with approval ratings as low as Obama’s. Truman?

[RTFirefly]

@Fear_Itself

The last sitting member of Congress nominated as vice president on the winning ticket was John Nance Garner in 1932

I think you mean the last sitting member of the House of Representatives.

As read, the right answer is Joe Biden, 2008.

[Chefguy]

Two Ken dolls, how cute. A moderate and a slash-and-burn right wing extremist. I’d rather have him in the VP slot than in the House, however. At least as Veep, he’s not in a position to introduce legislation to attack Medicare. I wonder how the South Florida senior population feels about this clown being a beat away from the POTUS office.

[Fear_Itself]

@RTFirefly

I think you mean the last sitting member of the House of Representatives.

Yes, of course. My bad.

[ElvisL1ves]

@jtgain

This is keeping tax rates at their current levels so as not to raise taxes on job creators when unemployment is above 8%.

The “job creators” have had historically low tax rates for a fucking *decade *or so. Where are the fucking *jobs * they’re creating? At what point do we start to accept that they’ve not only failed at it, but that the debt we’ve taken on in the cause of “motivating” them might actually be a *cause *of our economic problems? :dubious: Do you understand how hard a sell that is? Do you know how completely fantasy-based it is, or how well the electorate is aware of that?

Yes, we have a boring 30 point plan, but please read it.

Is *that *where we can find what you want to replace Obamacare *with *after you repeal it?

BTW, that “plan” is a bunch of content-free PowerPoint bullet points, with no actual shovel-ready policy proposals anywhere, not after all these years they’ve had to put something serious together. But you know that. It isn’t boring, it’s just pathetic.

Because he’s got nothin’. Nothing but criticism at our plan. Let him put a plan out there that saves entitlements and gets our financial house in order.

What rock have you been living under for the last four years? And what campaigning has Romney done that isn’t simply blaming Obama for everything?

The polls pretty consistently show a substantial majority putting most of the blame on Bush, not Obama, btw. An argument that we need more of the policies that caused the mess to get us out of it will be, at the most, entertaining. But mostly sad.

Paul Ryan doesn’t come across as a scary guy like Newt Gingrich.

Among those who know who he is, yes, yes he does. And that will constitute pretty much all of the electorate very soon.