Team Obama Begins To Unveil Its Plan Of Attack On Romney/Ryan
The Obama campaign has begun to respond to the addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket.
While Republicans are generally greeting the news of Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate with a high degree of enthusiasm, their opponents on the other side of the aisle don’t exactly seem to be cowering in fear. In fact, to listen to many Democratic pundits and operatives over the past several days as Ryan’s name rose to the top of the Veep speculation list, Ryan is exactly the candidate they want. They seemed to be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to add the attacks on the Ryan Plan that we’ve seen in the past to their current attacks on Mitt Romney as out of touch with regular Americans. Now that the pick is official, National Journal’s Major Garrett writes that the Obama campaign is eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to take on the Romney/Ryan ticket:
Whether it’s true or not, senior advisers to President Obama’s re-election campaign believed, long before presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney picked Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, that Romney had been oddly and helpfully “collaborative” in making the Obama case against him.
That’s the word David Axelrod used in an interview with National Journal to describe Romney’s unwillingness to pitch a strong national narrative about his life, his plans for the nation or how he understood the economic travails of the middle class. Axelrod found Romney’s dug-in refusal to release more tax returns (only 2010 so far, with 2011 coming) similarly helpful. Axelrod even thought Romney’s overseas trip helped Obama reinforce a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time meme.
From team Obama’s perspective, the Ryan choice transforms this imagined and perceived collaboration into a virtual partnership.
“It plays right into it,” a senior Obama strategist told National Journal. ”Romney believes in cutting taxes for the wealthy and making the middle class pay for them. Ryan not only believes it, but he’s actually done it. It’s Romney’s agenda in action.”
Obama aides had been convinced that Romney would settle on former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Again, fevered perceptions of rival campaign weaknesses are just that. But they now believe Romney has used his biggest choice of the campaign to drive home their central indictment of his candidacy and his policies — that they pose a threat to middle-class livelihoods and aspirations.
One Obama backer privately said — not the least bit in jest — that the campaign could now siphon off cash donations for margarita machines, because there was so much to celebrate between now and Election Day.
Another Democratic operative declared the election effectively over — that Ryan was the self-hammered nail in Romney’s own coffin.
While I agree with the Ryan pick is in many ways a risky one because of the manner in which it puts the Medicare issue front and center in a way that it probably would not have been had the VP nominee been, say Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman. Nonetheless, I think it’s a bit premature for Team Obama to be counting their electoral chickens. The conventions haven’t even been held, the September campaigning hasn’t occurred, and the debates haven’t happened. It’s certainly possible that Obama For America will be as successful in negative campaigning against Romney/Ryan as they were against Ryan, however it’s also possible that those negative ads could backfire. Moreover, if the economy continues to stagnate and job growth remains as pathetically lukewarm as it has been for months, then the message that Romney and Ryan seem to be settling on with the theme “America’s Comeback Team” could end up resonating. While the President continues to lead in the polls, those same polls all show that the public is dissatisfied with the direction of the country and that a majority of Americans disapprove of the President’s handling of the economy. I understand the desire of campaign representatives to show confidence to the press, but one would assume that they are just a bit more sober in their evaluations behind closed doors.
Michael Hastings, meanwhile, tells us to expect to hear one word from Democrats a lot over the next several days:
Within minutes of Gov. Romney taking the stage to announce Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential pick, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina dropped the “R-word” in an email blast to supporters.
“Congressman Paul Ryan,” Messina wrote, “is best known as the author of a budget so radical The New York Times called it ‘the most extreme budget plan passed by a House of Congress in modern times.'”
So radical.
It was a line of attack that the Obama campaign had tried over the past year to pin on Romney.
In April, Obama himself blasted what he called Romney and the Republicans attempt to “impose a radical vision on our country.”
But the line didn’t quite stick to the former governor — Romney’s shifting positions and technocratic record made painting him as an extremist a messaging challenge for Chicago.
(…)
For the most part, the Obama camp abandoned their attempts to make Romney seem like a radical. They found more success in describing the Republican candidate as an out of touch, super-rich corporate felon with bank accounts in the Caymans and tax loopholes wider than gaps in the O-Zone.
But the choice of Paul Ryan makes the R-word once again chic, and Chicago is now going to combine the narratives they’ve set for their rivals–to, in essence, run against the rich guy and the radical.
Indeed, within hours of this morning’s announcement in Norfolk, Obama for America was out with this video:
At one and three-quarter minutes, this ad is far too long to be put on television in its present form (although it would be possible to edit it down into a one minute or 30 second spot in the near future) but you can expect to see pieces it on the Sunday morning shows tomorrow morning and on cable for a good part of next week. Presumably, the Romney campaign will be out with a positive piece of some kind in the next couple days, but that Obama piece is a pretty good idea of what we’re likely to hear all the way through the convention. It’s not really a surprise, trying to pin the word “radical” on the Republican nominee has been a part of the Democratic mantra going back to when Jimmy Carter was running against Ronald Reagan (and before that when Johnson was running against Goldwater). In the modern era at least, it hasn’t always worked. Reagan was simply too charismatic for the attempts to demonize him to work. The argument in 1988 that George H.W. Bush was some kind of “radical” was simply silly, and the same was true of Dole in 1996, Bush 43 in 2000, and McCain in 2008. Not all those candidates won, of course, but I would submit that they ones who lost did so due to reasons independent of any campaign to paint them as a “radical.”?
Will it work this time around? We won’t really know that until the race begins in earnest, but the real question is going to be whether or not such a tactic is going to be sufficient to distract the public from the terrible state of the economy. Personally, I still believe that the President and Vice-President have the advantage in this race, but if I were the staffers at Obama HQ in Chicago, I’d hold off on drinking those margarita’s until Election Night as a means of either celebrating or drowning their sorrows.
Photo via Politico
The most interesting thing for me is that GOP support for the Ryan budget, exactly as stated, collapsed immediately with the announcement.
It is now a starting point, and better than nothing, etc.
That is amazing.
I wonder if this won’t end up increasing Obama’s coattails if he is re-elected? If Romney/Ryan is strongly linked to the GOP in Congress, that should benefit Democratic candidates.
I consider the Ryan/Romney Plan to privatize Medicare to be “radical”, don’t you?
I also consider their plan to reduce the top tax rate from 34% to 25% while increasing defense spending and, by their own numbers, not reducing the deficit for ten years, to be doubling down on the idiocy that we indulged in from 2001 to 2008.
The question is, are Americans ready to run off the cliff with those two?
Maybe so, we are a profoundly dumbed down country.
The first anti-Ryan Super PAC ad is already out.
I am impressed that even during all this bad press over Romney’s tax returns, he’s managed to pick someone for VP that thinks Romney shouldn’t have to pay any income taxes at all. Not just less taxes, as that was a given for the GOP, but absolutely no taxes at all.
So we’re now to the point where the GOP platform is basically that the rich should get a free ride from the rest of us.
@Donald Sensing:
Wow. Republicans just don’t do humor.
First day in a while Romney’s taxes have not been the main topic.
Steve
@john personna:
The most interesting thing for me is that GOP support for the Ryan budget, exactly as stated, collapsed immediately with the announcement.
Let them try. They passed the damned thing in the House. They are stuck with it.
@Donald Sensing:
What’s interesting to me, and what should be in that mock-up Ad – is that Paul Ryan was a recipient of Social Security Survivor Benefits, which helped him to get through college, and now Ryan wants to compromise Social Security system by calling for the establishment of private accounts. “Entitlements” were good and beneficial for him, but evidently not so much for everyone else.
@michael reynolds:
Wow. Republicans just don’t do humor.
Indeed. That was just awful.
Ryan – Romney.
No tough decisions. Only licking upwards and kicking downwards.
Maximum suffering for the vulnerable and politically less engaged.
Minimal inconvenience for the rich or politically favored.
Maximum bigotry against “sinful” women and gays.
Minimal impact to deficit because the rich get all the free lunches they want.
Maximum military build-up.
Minimal environmental protection and worker’s rights. Hope you like carcinogens and mercury, filthy workers and lazy non-Job Creators.
It’s all there in their pledges. It’s all there in their budgets, promises and plans.
If you challenge me on this, you are lying to my face.
Why would you pick Ryan if you are going to immediatly throw his budget under the bus?
That would be like nominating Romney and expecting him to run against Romneycare.
Oh…wait…er………
The Grand Ol’ Plutocrats raised $1M in the first 4 hours after the Ryan pick.
I gave Obama some money based on the Ryan pick…but it wasn’t $1M.
@Donald Sensing:
It will likely be more something like this:
David Frum – The Coming Democratic Attack Barrage
Pining for the Obama that they used to know
It appears Obama may not be the newest American Idol this time around.
Doug wrote: “[T]he real question is going to be whether or not such a tactic is going to be sufficient to distract the public from the terrible state of the economy.”
My goodness. Your posts seem to be getting more and more thoughtless. Voters don’t become distracted; instead they weigh other considerations. No one who is unemployed or worried about losing his/her job is going to forget about that, but they will ask whether some rich, out-of-touch, corporate layoff expert and his zombie-eyed granny starver VP are the ones best suited to improve the economy.
“While the President continues to lead in the polls,”
That is a debatable point. The only “polls” I’ve seen where Obama leads are polls taken by Obama Loving Media like CNN, NBC, Reuters, ABC, et al that are sampling 10% – 20% more Dems that Repubs. If your sample is Dem 40, Rep 20, Ind 40, of course Obama should be ahead. Why all these media organizations are juicing all the polls to boost Obama is a good question.
They are obviously juicing their samples to interview more Dems to boost Obama. I would like to see polls where Dems are closer to +2% or even with Repubs. That is more representative of what we’ll see in Nov. The daily tracking polls, which are using more balanced D versus R samples, actually show Obama’s approval rating in the gutter and Romney tied or slightly ahead.
Good lord. Has OTB become an All Lib, All the time site now???. At one time, this site often provided a balance perspective. Now, everything is spun from the Dem perspective. This is obvious since almost all commenters here are the left wing variety. This was once such a reliably balanced site. Too bad the Libs have taken over.
@Smooth Jazz: Real Clear Politics might disagree with you on the polling numbers.
@Smooth Jazz:
Fox News is part of the Obama loving media?
ROTFL
I really think this bears some consideration…
No sooner does Romney pick Ryan that he starts running away from the Ryan budget?
What else has Ryan done? Besides vote for all the things currently having the biggest impact to the deficit. The Ryan budget is what Ryan is about. It is his raison d’etre.
And Romney is running away from Romneycare; his biggest accomplishment as Governor. The campaign mentioned it the other day and the right wing went nuts. He promptly went to ground and let his PR flack take the heat. Ann Coulter called for her to be fired.
So the two things these guys are known for…they are dis-owning. Are we to believe they no longer believe in them? Or are they laying in the weeds waiting to spring them on an un-suspecting nation?
It’s really too much…these guys are just GRIFTERS.
ROMNEY/RYAN ’12
Selling the Mathematically Impossible
Perhaps team Obama should attack Ryan for suggesting the existence of snow proves global warming is a hoax.
Fox News is part of the Obama loving media?
I wouldn’t say that, but they switched to a new polling organization that is more favorable to Dems for some reason. The bigger issue is the one I noted earlier: The Fox poll had a +10% Dem over Repub demo. Why Fox’s polling organ polled 10% more Dems than Repubs is beyond me. But ANY poll that polls that many more group than another is going to have an advantage in the poll. It is what is.
“@Smooth Jazz: Real Clear Politics might disagree with you on the polling numbers ”
I think you need to check the link you sent to me again. THE RCP AVGS PROVE MY POINT. The Daily Tracking polls, which rely on samples that are more reasonable (ie Dem 35, Rep 33, Ind 32) either show a tied race or Romney slightly ahead.All the media polls that have Dems interviewed by 10% (Fox, NBC, Reuters) to 20% (Pew, CNN) more that Repubs have Obama ahead by 7 – 9 points, which make sense given the skew of the poll. Those juiced polls make the RCP average meaningless. All those organization should take polls with a more Representative balance of the electorate (D 35, Rep 35, Ind 30), and let’s see what the numbers say then. I think they are all scared to poll a representative sampe because they know Obama would be losing. It is what it is.
@Smooth Jazz:
Please show us evidence of the current partisan breakdown in the US.
@Smooth Jazz: You’re basically claiming all the polls are biased against your candidate, without any actual evidence or motive for the polling organizations. You’re likely to be in for a surprise the day after the election then.
Electoral is the only thing that matters. The trending shows Romney losing, and by a good margin. Hence the Hail Mary.
@C. Clavin:
I believe you’re forgetting that Romney is also known for his business acumen and yet is running away from that as well. Which I guess leaves him running on the, “Look, I’m white!” platform.
David Axelrod just sent me this video.
You know, because me and David are tight. . . or because I’m on the donor list. One of those two.
“Please show us evidence of the current partisan breakdown in the US. ”
If I knew the answer to that, I would be in the prognostication business or some such.
I do know that in 2008, a great year from Dems and Obama, it was something like Dem 36 Rep 30, Ind 34. In 2010, a great year for Reps, the breakdown was Dem 33, Rep 34, Ind 33. I suspect 2012 would be something in between maybe. I doubt it will be Dems outvoting Reps by a margin or 20% – 40% of voters Dem, while 20% of voters. That is prepostorous. That has never happened before in our history and I doubt that partisan breakdown will be happening in 2012.
@Smooth Jazz:
I think they are all scared to poll a representative sampe because they know Obama would be losing. It is what it is.
Yes, correctly weighted polls produce different results. Polls showing D+7,9,11 and higher are mind candy for the dems and Obama. Even D+3 polls are probably sampling too many dems. But, this figure should be the absolute highest one in their polling numbers.
BTW, when Gallup polled Ryan’s plan with the dems, in April 2011, it was positively received by most demographics:
@Smooth Jazz: You’re basically claiming all the polls are biased against your candidate, without any actual evidence. You’re likely to be in for a surprise the day after the election then.
The “evidence” is the breakdown of the polling sample. For the umpteenth time, organizations like Pew & CNN that are skewing their sample with 20% more Dems than Repub are deluding themselves. I never said “all” polls are biased against Romeny.
Look at the Daily Tracking polls which are polling hundreds of people daily using partisan breakdowns that are more representative of the breakdown in Nov – Not this Dem 40, Rep 20, Ind 40 crap. The Daily Trackers show Romney either tied or ahead in the Daily Tracking polls.
I think YOU are the one who may be in for a surprise on Election Day if you are relying on bogus polls that are polling twice as many Dems as Repuds. That AINT gonna happen. There are not going to be twice as many Dems versus Repubs voting this Nov. Sorry to disappoint you.
@Smooth Jazz:
Not all the polls on RCP have that partisan breakdown, so you may want to try again.
Well, I’m convinced:
Everything is going great for Mr. Romney. The polls are all lies, even the Fox News polls. Romney’s actually ahead because everyone hates Obama, they just do, and everyone is going to love Ryan, especially the youth whose student loans he would cut off and the old folks whose Medicare he’d endanger, because just look at how youthful and white and rich and white and rich he looks and don’t we all love that?
@jan:
So, Jan:
If Ryan’s budget is such a winner why is Mr. Romney already running away from it?
@michael reynolds:
He’s not, that I’ve seen. However, Romney is not embracing it 100%. The Ryan plan is but a framework, or work in progress, which will experience modifications, updates, and tweeks, before it is ever adopted. Ryan encouraged the Senate to at least present it to their members, and then do what ever re-writes they wanted, just to get a budget conversation started. But, Reid would have no part of such a dialogue, maybe because something bipartisan could have been achieved.
Everything is going great for Mr. Romney. The polls are all lies, even the Fox News polls. Romney’s actually ahead because everyone hates Obama, they just do, and everyone is going to love Ryan, especially the youth whose student loans.
Nobody is claiming that. You’re the one who said that, not me. Fox is not a polling organization. They hire an entity to do polls for them, and the last Fox poll has a Dem +10% partisan advantage over Repubs. That is not a realistic representation of the electorate in Nov. Believe what you want.
What I’m saying is that the 2 Daily tracking polls that have a more balanced partisan breakdown show that race closer. Nobody said things are going great for Romney.
@jan:
Romney will not push the Ryan Plan
Oh? How so?
Rather, people can be reminded of the social safety net in place that is particularly helpful to people during hard times…a social safety net that Paul Ryan wants to destroy…
Ahh, but this new American Idol can so easily be painted as the villain…
Obama just has to tell the truth: Romney and Ryan want to raise taxes on everyone making under $200K a year, so they can give free money and tax cuts to corporations and rich people. Oh, and they intend to use payroll taxes some of that free money.
@jan:
The Senate rejected the Ryan budget 57-40, so I’m not sure where you got the idea they didn’t vote on it.
@David M:
Where did you ever get a partisan breakdown like that? And, in what year does that represent such a breakdown?
Rasmussen, as of June 2012, has it at 34/35.4/30.5 as their D/R/unaffiliated breakdown.
Gallup had the dems at the high water mark of 40 in 2008. By the time 2011 rolled around they tabulated the D/R ratios as, 45/45 when Indie leaners were calculated into these two categories. Gallup has openly said that Obama is not going into this election with the same support he had in ’08.
@michael reynolds:
“. . . because just look at how youthful and white and rich and white and rich he looks and don’t we all love that?”
I’m going to have to declare this as the comment of the day.
Is there chance that you comment on David Frum’s thread at The Daily Beast under the moniker Ottovbvs? You both are quick with pithy funny comments that cut to the bone.
@jan:
So how did you know, within a few hours, to throw the Ryan plan under the bus?
Dumb, because once you abandon the plan, you have no plan.
All that stuff about being superior because you have a plan goes out the window. Instead, the Etch-A-Sketch moments just keep on coming.
@jan: Smooth Jazz is claiming all the polls beside the tracking polls can be ignored because they have that breakdown I quoted. I was saying not all the polls (if any) have that breakdown, he was making it up.
(I’m not sure that polling companies difficulty finding Republicans is good news for Republicans.)
What these idiots don’t seem to understand is that the polling outfits don’t weight by party affiliation. They weight by demographics, and the party ID numbers are just the outcome.
Hey…Jan’s back from the bookstore!!!
Did you find the link that proves you are not a liar…or can I go on…knowing full well that you are?
@jan: “The Ryan plan is but a framework, or work in progress, which will experience modifications, updates, and tweeks, before it is ever adopted.”
Another load of crap from liar Jan. The Ryan plan isn’t “but a framework” — it was a budget passed in its entirety as a bill by the House of Representatives, and if the Senate had also been run by lunatics it could be the law of the land.
Stop playing this moron game that it was just supposed to start a dialogue. It was a bill, and the Republican House all voted for it.
@wr:
The House passes a budget. It is then sent to Senate, where it is debated. If there are disagreements, it can be reconfigured and then sent back to the House. The Senate, though, has been frozen in place, as to constructing it’s own budget, or debating any alternatives posed from the House.
wr you are beyond dishonest in your posts.
Yeah, I loves me that Ryan plan. 54 years old, been working as a union carpenter most of my life. Got arthritis in both hands, elbows, shoulders….. bursitis in both shoulders and elbows….. tendonitis in both elbows…. I have 2 broken vertebra, I don’t know how many broken “carpals” and ribs??? Hell, a month and a half ago I picked up a 5 gal bucket of concrete rubble and a rib popped out of it’s socket. I wake up at 1;30 every morn, and again at 2 am, and again at 3:30 and then I just give the f-up and deal with the pain. My right knee has torn cartilage and my neck (1-5 cervical vertebrae) is all kinds of F’d up.
And to top it all off, I have phlebitis (sp?)(blood clots) Spent a week in ICU, unable to get out of my bed to take a piss or sh!t like a man cause they thought I was going to croak. Twice.
Who the fwck, in their right mind, is going to insure me?
Tell me…. please….
ps: and for the record, I, and a couple thousand guys like me, built your houses. But fwck us, we should have gone to college.
Why is Slick Willard running away from the Ryan Budget as fast as he can???
http://www.democracycorps.com/National-Surveys/serious-attack-on-ryan-budget-takes-toll-on-mitt-romney/
You don’t need a ouija board or a divining rod to figure out the Dems’ plan of attack. It’s so patently obvious Andrea Bocelli could see it. And it really doesn’t matter whom was selected as Romney’s running mate, although ironically enough with Ryan on the ticket it’ll dovetail with what in any case would have been a core line of attack.
Team Obama: (1) will play the race card to gin up turnout among blacks in big cities, (2) will engage in a Mediscare strategy to hold down Romney’s margin among seniors, (3) will play up student loan reform to try to gin up turnout among the college and grad school cannon fodder blocs, (4) further will engage in personal attacks upon Romney’s wealth, background and ultimately his religion, to try to turn the contest as ugly as possible and to distract people from the disastrous economy.
Not a principled strategy, granted, but it’s potentially a winning strategy and that’s really what counts.
@Smooth Jazz:
🙂
@Spartacus:
Thanks. No, that’s not me. Some other guy wasting time on threads when he should be working.
Sure, like those Obama loving zombies at Fox:
Fox News poll: Obama’s lead grows as Romney’s support slips
@David M:
You’re right. Thanks for the correction.
Under the Ryan Budget taxes on capital gains go to zero%.
That means that Romney would actually pay no federal income taxes. None. Zero. Nada.
Clearly Jan doesn’t think Romney should pay taxes.
But she has previously said that the poor and the sick and the elderly…the so called 47%…should pay more taxes.
That’s all you really need to know about Jan…and people like her.
@jan: You pretend that the Ryan budget was intended as the starting point for a discussion. That’s a lie. It was a bill passed by congress. The Republicans tried to pass it in the Senate. If it hadn’t been stopped, Medicare would be a worthless voucher program now and Mitt Romney would never have to pay another cent in Federal income taxes, since the capital gains tax would have been eliminated.
To pretend that this was anything other than an attempt to completely rewrite the way America works is not only dishonest, it’s ludicrous.
This is the plan your party tried to inflict on America. Lie all you want about how it was just “opening a dialogue.” Everyone else knows the truth.
@OzarkHillbilly: “ps: and for the record, I, and a couple thousand guys like me, built your houses. But fwck us, we should have gone to college.”
No, you should have been born rich. Or you should have spent your young life carrying water for right wing multi-billionaires, who would have made sure you were taken care of.
These are the only two classes of people who count in Jan’s America.
Can we set up some kind of app or whatever to alert me on the off chance that Jan actually says something true? I’d hate to miss to miss it.
So much Marxist craptrap so little time to read it…
Of course it makes more sense to argue about the Ryan budget than the Democratic budget. Ryan’s plan has the disadvantage of actually existing.
For those who’ve lost count, today marked Day 1200 of America Without A Budget, brought to you by the Democratic Party. Democrats — those wonderful people who brought you the Ku Klux Klan, Vietnam, and the War On Poverty.
@Smooth Jazz:
In other words, the reality-based polls currently show Obama with a modest lead over Romney, but the non-reality based people disagree.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
FY 2013 budget is at whitehouse dot gov
@jan:
The Senate actually voted it down.
Let’s face it, Romney can try to run away from it, but the Ryan Budget Plan is now the Romney/Ryan Budget Plan – cut taxes by 27%, begin to privatize Medicare, increase defense spending, and have the same high deficits (their own numbers) for at least 10 years.
@john personna: Is that the one that got ZERO votes in the Senate?
At NationalJournal.com, the headline reads, “Obama Team Salivates Over Ryan Pick”. After browsing through many of the other headlines, it might be more appropriate to write, “Obama Team Foams At the Mouth Over Ryan Pick”.
Vote Romney/Ryan in 2012.
@Jenos- Yes. They also offered budgets in 2010 and 2011. Congress has not passed them. They do exist. If you go to the link you can look at the Ryan budget. It offers comparisons to the Obama budget, which you claim does not exist. Your VP candidate seems to think it exists.
http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pathtoprosperity2013.pdf
Steve
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Congress has the lowest approval in government because of stuff like that.
Stacking plans to plans (Obama, Romney, or Ryan) Obama’s is the most sane.
That Congess has stalled for years without doing better, that they are ready to winge on sequestration, is a Congressional problem.
@MKS:
The New Republic has a good argument that the pick makes Romney’s tax problems worse.
He actually picked a guy who has said Mitt should pay no income tax.
@steve: Funny how you didn’t mention 2009, when the Democrats held both Houses, and how the Democrats still hold the Senate. Seems like it’s Harry Reid and crew who are deciding that nah, we don’t really need a budget after all.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
We had a budget deal, with automatic sequestration, remember?
Not optimal but a deal.
Who is trying to break it and spend more?
You are.
This is simply breathtaking. Romney can no longer talk about his business background. He can no longer talk about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts. And he can no longer talk about his tenure at the SLC Olympics, lest the huge federal dollar contribution come up. And now the ticket can’t talk about the Ryan “budget”. What do they have left? Besides the fact that they aren’t black?
(Mitt has also said beak the deal, and keep spending up. It is the mean old socialist President who is willing to let cuts go through. Topsy turvy world.)
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Funny how you didn’t mention 2009, when the Democrats held both Houses,
They passed a budget that year, dipshit.
and how the Democrats still hold the Senate. Seems like it’s Harry Reid and crew who are deciding that nah, we don’t really need a budget after all.
First of all, we don’t actually need a budget. Second, the Republicans hold the House.
I’m very excited about the Ryan pick and the opportunities it creates to highlight the problem of innumeracy in this country. Because I’ve never seen anything that didn’t add up like the Ryan “Plan”.
I can’t remember a Republican ticket that was this bereft in foreign policy. Even Reagan-Bush ’80 had more FP chops than this years’ model.
The Ryan choice has been adequately sliced and diced here on domestic concerns (which are definitely more important in every US election), but FP has always been a GOP strength. This is coupled with the fact that outside of The Bubble, Obama has been particularly adept in FP.
Should an international incident occur before November, the GOP FP paucity is going to be a real problem for the Right. “Real Men march to Tehran” isn’t exactly the zeitgeist of the 20-teens.
@bk:
I think you’re overlooking the fact that they aren’t just not-black, they’re super-white.
The Ryan´s budget is not a framework. It´s a fantasy. Implementing it would require shutting down the entire government, with the exception of Defense, servicing the debt and Social Security/Medicare and as the old saying says, long term economic projections was created to make astrology looks. If the interest rates increases(A natural thing to happen when you have gigantic deficits) everything changes.
Besides that, the idea of doing whatever with Medicare in ten years is laughable.
GHW Bush turned out to be a skilled foreign policy president. His handling of Gulf I and the fall of the Soviet Union was really first rate.
I think Jenos scored a half gallon of Rossi Bros Vin Rose tonight. Or maybe some Nyquil…
This whole polling thing just reminds me why the Repubs are in such serious trouble. There’s always some nitwit on the end of the bar that’s ready with a loud and self satisfied tirade about how ‘the experts don’t know nothing, but I got the real facts.” They then spout something that would be absolutely crushing, if indeed people who had spent their lives studying the subject (rather than driving to work listening to Rush-bo’s spittle fleck invective) hadn’t thought of it. This idea that the polling experts are too stupid to take into account the differing rates of response in different groups, while bar-seat-man sees it right in front of his eyes, is just the latest instance.
Of course, loud-mouth-bar-stool-ism is certainly not limited to people who click “R’s” at the voting booth, so why do I feel that the Repubs in particular are screwed? It’s because those loud mouth tools are actually getting elected to office as Republicans, actually becoming leaders in the party.
sensing:
You are so not funny it’s not funny.
============
david:
Yes. Only 4 Rs in the House voted against the Ryan budget. They are Walter Jones, David McKinley, Ron Paul and Denny Rehberg. The other 236 Rs in the House are now going to wear that vote like an anchor, because a lot of voters who never thought much about the Ryan plan are about to get educated.
As mantis said: “They passed the damned thing in the House. They are stuck with it.”
============
al-ameda:
And keeps running deficits until about 2060.
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jenos:
This claim is false for multiple reasons. One reason that hasn’t been mentioned is here. And this plan eliminates the deficit a lot sooner than Ryan does.
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me me me:
Well, don’t be unfair to Mitt’s own tax plan. It also does an excellent job of not adding up.
doug:
Why it’s going to be easy is summarized here:
Voters are going to find it hard to believe, but Obama has a big microphone and he’s going to do a good job of explaining it to them.
@mantis:
Actually, Ras does weight by party ID, and that’s one of the reasons a lot experts are very skeptical about their results. That and the fact that they are out of line with not only other pollsters but also actual election results.
As for the actual partisan breakdown of the country, there’s this: http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/party-identification
Most of these polls are for registered voters and all Americans, but it’s still too far away from the election for likely voter screens to be meaningful so while these polls may overstate the Democratic advantage slightly there’s no useful remedy for it. Of course, a more serious problem with this is that it take the “independent” label seriously, when we all (should) know that true independents are very, very few in number and the overwhelming majority of them have a strong tie to one or the other of the parties that they do not wish to admit to for whatever reason.
Thanks to the Ryan pick, the House will be in play:
http://www.democracycorps.com/Battleground-Surveys/
@wr:
You’re right, my bad. Sycophant is a much better paying position.
In order to be a good Republican you have to like this position.
@KariQ:
Actually, Ras does weight by party ID, and that’s one of the reasons a lot experts are very skeptical about their results.
Indeed, but I said polling outfits. Scott Rasmussen’s little outfit doesn’t qualify, in my mind. Rasmussen is to polling as Fox is to news.
THe reax of Axlerod is amusing…..just today saying of the Romney/Ryan economic plan: “This is a prescription for economic catastrophe.”
Which, of course would be downright laughable, if it weren’t so tragic, given what Obama and his enablers like Axlerod said would work … and is “working fine”.
Moving away from that “solution” is radical?
As if Obama is mainstream?
Pulllease.
@Eric Florack:
Well, I knew I could count on you to support the Ryan Plan which: lowers the top marginal tax bracket from 34% to 25%, while increasing defense spending, and (by their own numbers) project bigger deficits than we have now for 2013 to 2023. This is doubling down on the idiocy of the Bush years when we cut taxes twice while waging 2 wars and passing a Medicare prescription drug program – all purely deficit funded.
@Eric Florack:
Here’s the problem:
On the other hand, President Obama is willing to play it straight up:
An Analysis of the President’s 2013 Budget
@al-Ameda: All of which dorve the largest recovery in American history last time it was tried.
@Eric Florack:
The dot-com bubble was easy, because its losses were paper and largely non-leveraged.
I lost a bundle in the dot-com crash. Luckily I made a lot in the run-up and came out ahead. I wasn’t left like homeowners in a housing crash with both a loan I couldn’t pay and a property I could not sell.
Credit contractions are rare, and difficult.
Good Lord: You are posting propaganda from a far left organization as fact???
How about you Libs waiting for the Ryan pick to take hold before rejoicing and claiming landslide. Obama is not very popular remember, barely in theMid 40s in Gallup job approval.
Good grief: Outside the Beltway, a once balanced and reputable site with a nice mixture of views from BOTH sides, has now been taken over by Far Left cranks.
Simple question for you. If you could wave a magic wand and take the economy back to where it was the day before Obama took office, would you? Or would you stay with what we have today? Yes/No question…
@Smooth Jazz: We’re not far left; we’re simply knowledgable about arithmetic. Which neither Ryan nor Romney seem to be.
During GWB’s term, the Dow dropped 22%. Since Obama took office, it’s up 60%. Smooth just probably hasn’t noticed.
I got out of the market in 2001, and back in a few days after Obama took office. It worked out pretty well.
@Eric Florack:
all of which created the largest housing bubble in American history, the collapse of which in 2008 caused the biggest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression.
$14 Trillion in income and wealth was vaporized in the 2008 collapse, which completely explains the anemic recovery, weak aggregate demand, and persistent unemployment we’ve experienced since 2008.
That said, I find it interesting that you – even after the fact – approve of the fact that Bush reduced tax rates twice, waged 2 wars, passed a Medicare Supplemental Program, all of which was entirely deficit funded. In fact, you now approve of Paul Ryan’s Deficit Spending Plan.
Team Obama Begins To Unveil Its Plan Of Attack On Romney/Ryan
Vote for Us and We Will Put You on the Dole. Vote for them and grandma will be turned into Soylent green, and your children will drink poisoned water.
No, she just won’t have health insurance, which is kind of important to senior citizens.
Drew’s message to people hurt in the Bush crash – “I’ve got mine loser. Eat cake”.
@jan:
No surprise there – Romney doesn’t embrace his own comments and statements.
@Drew:
So Drew, who is putting who on the dole? The claim is that Bain is still at it:
Now, you’ve been solidly in the “cut taxes on rich guys like me, and we’ll give you jobs” corner.
Would you do that? Would you move jobs for more profit? If so, what does that do to the social promise you made us? That is, the low taxes for jobs promise.
Here’s a serious guy, with serious Democratic bone fides, who says all you leftist clowns are completely full of shit. But we all knew that already.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/13/video-erskine-bowles-says-ryan-budget-sensible-honest-serious/
@Drew:
That was the set-up, Drew. This was the completion:
Ryan’s budget, for all the praise Bowles gave him in the lead in, is only one of the impossible plans.
You need what I’ve been asking for, a Grand Bargain, to make it work.
PDF of the whole talk is here.
Drew sounds angry and grouchy. As do Jan, Jenos, & bithead. Guess adding Ryan to the ticket has not instilled a lot of confidence in them.
drew:
Bowles is a second-generation investment banker. He is properly classified as a Rockefeller Republican, just like Obama and Clinton (link). He also likes to go to great lengths to present himself as ‘severely’ bipartisan. So in that same speech you can hear him describing Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott as “great leaders” and “men of vision.” He also happens to mention this: “I agree with almost everything that David Brooks writes.” So he might be your idea of a Democrat, but he’s not my idea of a Democrat.
And Morrissey barely mentions this, but Bowles described Ryan’s Medicare proposal as “a pretty radical change.” So your claim that Bowles “says all you leftist clowns are completely full of shit” is just you being “completely full of shit.” As usual.
john:
That PDF is apparently his prepared remarks, not a transcript of what he actually said. The praise for Ryan and his plan is in the video, but not in the PDF. Likewise for the words I cited about Newt, Lott and Brooks.
@jukeboxgrad:
Still, I think the key is that you praise people like that in a talk and then wind around to what’s wrong with their position.
They key thing, without much bipartisan support, is that you must both raise tax and cut spending to fix the divergence.
And speaking of Rockefeller Republicans, here’s something timely from Krugman:
“Self-proclaimed centrists, who want to show their ‘balance’ by finding a conservative to praise” is a perfect description of Bowles and his praise for Ryan. And I think Bowles does have a problem with gullibility, and I think this has something to do with the way he failed when he attempted to be a politician.