Reply With QuoteMr. Ryan's Medicare plans will not play very well in the Sunshine State.Originally Posted by Huzurdaddi
Why, exactly?
I think Rubio would have been a better pick, but there was the chance he would be Palin-like.
Mr. Ryan's Medicare plans will not play very well in the Sunshine State.
Ryan claims that only those under 55 would have to take part in the privatized lotto scheme.
Those over 55 would continue to be covered under the old system. Because you can't possibly expect the GOP to apply their pet policies to the people who actually vote for them.
Ryan is a fine choice if you think working in the government is adequate preparation for the presidency. And most people probably do.
The trouble is that Romney wanted to make the opposite argument, highlighting his work in the private sector. By choosing Ryan, people are going to raise they eyebrows the next time he tries this.
I know they dropped the original voucher thing from the 2011 plan. I'm just not sure it'll matter. We'll see, but I suspect the "Ryan wants to fuck with Medicare" meme will stick in seniors minds, "But mostly for people younger than you" caveat notwithstanding.
The $160m ad buy that Obama set out in FL to coincide with the RNC just gained laser-sharp focus, for one.
I don't think I could put it much better than that. All retirees are likely to hear is "privatize social security", which didn't play very well with seniors when Bush tried it and will probably play even more poorly now.
Even the ones that pick up on the under-55 nuance are likely to view it askance. If they are alert enough to spot the difference now then they are also bright enough to see the problems with the proposal: Say you're a 60-year-old looking at receiving SS in a few years. Sure, your money is supposedly "protected" while the guy five years younger than you will be at the mercy of the market. But what happens in ten years? You're now 70 and the younger guy is 65. The market has tanked again, and the now-65-year-old is SOL... would you (in this situation) really believe that the failure will NOT affect your "safe" nestegg?
Without a doubt.
It amazes me that Romney can fuck up just about anything.
Such as introducing his VP pick.
Love the fact that they played the Air Force One theme as Ryan bounded down the stairs.
OMG thanks for making Obama's re-election easier, Mitt.
I noticed they both spoke from teleprompters.
Hahahahahahaahah
He's not the only one.
Re: Ryan--his dad died when he was young, right? Doesn't that mean that he received (gasp) Social Security survivor's benefits? I noticed Mitt glossed over that part when giving Ryan's mini-bio.
Leave it to the right-wing nutjobs at NPR to dig that up. ;)
Best pick possible: it was designed to lose the middle ground, just like McCain's did. Thank you, Mitt. Get that troglodyte in there and preach to the choir! Energize the Tea Baggers who already would vote for you out of sheer spite for Obama.
SS? Do tell.
I'm guessing Social Security, not Schutzstaffel.
- What’s all this?
- "Climb the Mountain of Conflict," we’re just choosing a font, you know, it’s… appropriate…
- What about that font the SS used? Have you thought about using that one?
- Er... well, that obviously has bad connotations.
- Heavy metal?
- No, the SS.
- Oh, right.
Are you telling me that the Ryan campaign actually chose a "Runic" type font for some campaign materials or something? This I must see. Links?
Second cycle in a row the GOP picks a wingnut to shore up the base support. Strange.
Hurrrrrrrrrr
What's so strange about it? Both McCain and Romney are more center right so they try to balance it out. It'd probably be the reverse had a more conservative candidate taken the nomination.
Well, it won't help him win the general election, that's why. The base was going to hold its collective nose and vote for Romney anyway thanks to the demonizing of the scary half-African brown man who can't be a Real American(tm), and now any swing voters except for those who (mistakenly) believe with a fiery passion that the US federal government can go broke will vote for Obama.
It's not as clear cut as you say. It isn't about the base flipping their vote, it's about getting them to the polls. Apathy is each party's worse enemy.
The calculus is (and always has been) about swing votes loss to core constituents mobilized. Ryan is a reasonably "safe" play, according to conventional wisdom. Palin was not, because everyone (other than McCain) could tell that the losses would be greater than the gains for adding her to the ticket.
I've heard stats that say almost everyone that is going to vote has already made up their mind by now for his elction, which is much earlier than the normal October time frame. So the focus now is to get the votes you should have in the bag out to the polls, so maybe Ryan isn't the worst choice.
I think this choice also has the potential to impact house and senate races. It will put the realities of the Ryan budget into the open, and will allow Democrats to leverage those points against Republicans who voted for the budget.
Mitt Romney is already trying to distance himself from the Ryan budget as on the same day he picked him as his VP, releasing a statement basically saying "I agree with some areas of the budget, but will craft my own plan." This, conceivably, gives them an opening to try to feign some support for medicare/medicaid as-is. This will not work. He's on record as a proponent of the budget in the debates and interviews, and he picked the guy as his flippin' running mate.
This is as divisive a selection as Palin, perhaps even more so. I don't know as though he thought he really had a choice considering the caterwauling from Repubs over the past week or so, but it has the potential to drag down the Republican ticket across the board.
Nate Silver on Ryan: most extreme VP nominee ever.
According to the article, most conservative congressional VP pick ever, based on voting record. As you can see, Palin ain't on there.
What a terribly fitting jacket.
I think this is right. As a liberal, this pick actually has me very worried.
That New Yorker piece posted earlier does a good job at laying out both sides of this. The first part touches on how this helps the Democrats, the second part on how it helps the Republicans. I think both parts are accurate and I think, over all, this is a huge win for the Republicans.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...#ixzz23GcnWroPPresumably, Romney’s main reason for picking Ryan is not his early deficit-busting record but his more recent rise to celebrity as a crusading policy wonk determined to tame the federal government. Romney, who has been extremely vague about what he would do if elected, will now own Paul Ryan’s ideas, which include privatizing Social Security, turning Medicare into a voucher program, bloc-granting and drastically cutting Medicaid, and reducing discretionary spending to levels that would affect every popular government program. This Ryan agenda will now fill the vacuum created by Romney’s unwillingness to lay out the specifics of his own plan. Even before this (apparent) announcement, Democrats were planning on tying Romney to Ryan’s policy platform. Now Romney has done it for them.
So what’s the potential upside? Romney seems to have realized that his spring and summer strategies have been a failure. Since winning the nomination, Romney’s plan has been to turn the election into a simple referendum on Barack Obama. With the ailing economy, Romney believed, he needed to do little more than stand around and wait for voters to sour on the incumbent. When they did, Romney would be there as the default alternative. In recent weeks, as Romney’s favorable ratings declined, some encouraging economic news dribbled out, and Obama’s poll numbers ticked up, a loud faction of Republicans began pointing out that Romney’s theory of the campaign was wrong. Their argument was that Romney needed to turn the race into more of an ideological debate. He needed, these Republicans said, to embrace a bold policy agenda that would dramatically contrast with Obama’s. Nobody made this case more loudly than Paul Ryan. Presidential candidates shouldn’t “run on vague platitudes and generalities,” he told me in one interview. “I want a full-throated defense for an alternative agenda that fixes the country’s problems,” he said in another.
The election is now about something more than Romney's personality vs Obama's personality and that's exactly what the Republicans needed.
Ryan is also pretty charismatic (I have a friend who is a Demographic staffer and even he likes Ryan on a personal level after having met him) and, for whatever reason, the mainstream media has been kind to him, treating him like a serious policy wonk rather than a dangerous idealouge. Finally, this gives all of the conservatives who have been holding their noses a reason to actually vote for Romney.
I think it is now a real race and that worries me.
I agree that the triumphalism displayed by some liberals at this pick is probably misguided. But it does offer a rather stark contrast between the two sides. Up until now it was easy to kid yourself that Romney would govern as a fairly moderate conservative. That's gone now. Nominating an arch-conservative as your VP pretty much shows where your ticket stands. And wanting to cut entitlements like Medicare is not going to help them in states with lots of old people (and soon to be old people) like Florida.
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