Let’s start by focusing on the wealthy’s sense of entitlement to low low tax rates and corporations’ sense of entitlement to corporate fraud, huge tax loopholes and etc. Medicare, ok, let’s put it on the table. But looking at only numbers and not effects on actual human beings is cruelly myopic. But look, it is only 12 hours and the one-sidedness of the GOP view is already grating on me.
Romney/Ryan
Now Grandma is dyin’
Bumpersticker!
This was the moment when Politifact jumped the shark. No, actually, it was when they named this their Lie of the Year last year
Come on. You know the horse is going to the glue factory once the election is over. It lost, after all.
There is no doubt Paul Ryan has a great head on his shoulders. He’s no Sarah Palin lightweight. But his personality reminds me of Dick Cheney/Darth Vader.
He may be able to run circles around Joe Biden in a debate, but people will like Joe more anyway.
Would anybody like to have beer with the guy who never, ever buys a round?
Let’s bring this topic back around to the candidates and Florida and leave the budget and procedural discussions to another thread.
Less than 20% of Seniors enroll in Medicare Advantage. 80% are still in traditional Medicare. So on a pure numbers game, what has been done affects far fewer people than what has been proposed by Ryan.
I don’t think this was a good move for getting Florida. It is a good move to rally the Tea Party and have the “Establishment GOP” (Romney) make nice with the “Upstarts.” However, its not a moderate pick and while it may help turn out the base, I think overall it will move Independents left.
I’ll see your Florida and raise you Arizona. What the Ryan pick does is write off Florida. Those seniors do not want their Medicare threatened. Now the Ryanites tried to calm the waters by saying to seniors “we’re not going to fuck you over, we’re going to fuck your kids over when they get to be your age.” I don’t think that will sell, seniors know that Republicans hate Medicare like they’ve always hated Social Security. Color Florida blue, it’s over.
Obama wins easily, and you can now put Arizona with its sizable senior population in play.
What makes you think that those over 55 don’t care about the future for their children under 55, but only about themselves? The very idea that this is a valid approach is pure class warfare.
This announcement constitutes a surrender for the Romney campaign, knowing it means losing Florida among many other places. Let’s hope this is Goldwater all over again, part of the process of healing the party of its infection so it can become responsible once again.
People who are 60 or 65 today aren’t going to trust Ryan not to throw them under the bus in a budget crisis if the Republicans have enough power to do so.
The reason it’s the lie of the year is because the Democrats’ ACA also ended Medicare as we know it.
Democrats think that Medicare means public health care. THat’s not how beneficiaries see it. If the program goes from an open ended promise to one where costs are controlled, that’s a very different program from what seniors have come to expect.
Responsibility means having a plan to deal with the entitlement problem. Show me the Democrats’ plan, and we’ll talk about responsibility.
Are they going to raise taxes on working people? Cut benefits? Or cut other spending down to the bone so that we are investing in our past rather than our future?
At the announcement, Romney introduced the “next President of the United States, Paul Ryan.”
You hadn’t heard? It’s the ultimate flip flop:
We go from: Romney-Ryan to Ryan-Romney.
Simply let the Bush tax cuts for Romney’s class expire, and we restore budget balance. Let the rich pay at least as much as everyone else.
Why is that not one of your options? And why do you think that’s going to be a good sell for anyone, including the over-55’s upon whose presumed selfishness you depend?
Now that Romney has made ending Medicare one of the centerpieces of his campaign (by picking the architect of that plan as his VP), with any luck the Obama campaign will be successful at overcoming that lie and making people aware of what Ryan and the Republicans want to do.
In spite of Politifact’s misrepresentation and attempt to make it the “lie of the year”, I don’t believe enough Americans are aware of it at all. Of course most of those who do are opposed to his plan to end Medicare, but it didn`t get anywhere near the attention and widespread understanding that comes from being the signature proposal of the VP candidate.
Um, because it only cuts the deficit over the next ten years by 10%. We’re $9 trillion in the hole. THe bush tax cuts for the rich will only raise $700-$900 billion.
It is fair to characterize Ryan’s plan as “ending Medicare as we know it” IMO, but don’t start whining when Ryan characterizes the ACA as “cutting Medicare by $500 billion”. We can either conduct this debate under ultra precise terms, or we can use the looser language more typical of a campaign.