Obama Campaign Fears Ryan Pick

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Since Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, the
Obama campaign, its shills and America’s national left-wing media echo
chamber (forgive the redundancies) have written and spoken a great deal
about Ryan, a bit of it only misleading, the rest of it false.

Romney’s pick sets up a serious debate over America’s future, but, lacking a
defensible first-term record in office, the Obama campaign and sympathetic
enablers want to stop it before it begins. The Obama campaign’s strategy of
demonization and distortion launched immediately following Ryan’s
announcement.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said Ryan’s plan "would end Medicare as
we know it." Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said
Romney and Ryan would force seniors to "choose between Medicare and meals."
To use a local term, baloney!

In Obamacare, congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama have
already passed $740 billion in Medicare cuts to spend elsewhere. Ryan’s plan
to preserve Medicare wouldn’t affect anyone older than 55. A proposed
voucher system, a focus of Democrats’ distortions, would be only one option
of several.

Without reform, Medicare is financially unsustainable. Reasonable people can
disagree about the specifics of Ryan’s proposed reforms, but no reasonable
person in either party can disagree that Ryan has made a serious proposal to
prevent Medicare’s collapse. In fact, Erskine Bowles, former Clinton
staffer, and Obama’s appointee to the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform, likes Ryan’s budget plan, has said so publicly
and refused to retract his statement under pressure from the Obama campaign.

Bowles was Democratic co-chair of the commission Obama assembled to detail a
deficit reduction plan before ignoring the commission’s recommendations and
running up $6 trillion in new debt.

Dr. William Voegeli observed: "Ryanism challenges the Democrats to finally
come clean, 80 years after launching the New Deal, about the cost and
consequences of their ambitions."

Of course, Democrats don’t want to have that conversation. As much as they
pay lip service to "Hope and Change," Democrats continue to defend the
status quo, a Jurassic political, fiscal and social model that, because of
its unsustainability, could destroy the futures of our children and
grandchildren.

As a vice presidential candidate, House Budget Chairman Ryan will focus
debate on entitlement reform, debt, and deficits – tough, but necessary,
fiscal policies. If Romney is to win, the election must be about the
economy. Ryan ensures that it will be.

Perhaps as important as his substance in a media sound-bite environment,
Paul Ryan is a personally affable, earnest and cordial politician of great
character with a young, photogenic family. Once seen and heard by voters,
Ryan will be difficult to demonize. He is a candidate who will energize the
grassroots, attract what we once called "Reagan Democrats" and bring into
play swing states like Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and (dare I think
it?) Pennsylvania.

The Obama campaign and sympathetic media figures have been distorting and
distracting furiously since the Ryan announcement. Political observer
Charlie Cooke spotted an over-the-top piece by Esquire’s Charles Pierce who
christened Rep. Ryan the "zombie-eyed granny-starver," a "murderer of
opportunity," and a "political coward," among other charming epithets.
Cooke:
"Pierce breathlessly explains, Ryan is not merely a man with a differing
view of the role of the federal government and a good-faith, if
controversial, plan to secure the future, but an authentically dangerous
zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them.
… This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we
will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul
Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth:
our government …

"Pierce’s hyperbole transcends mere disagreement, as does his dismissal of
all those who dissent as ‘gobshites.’ Instead, he seeks to remove Paul Ryan
– and his ideas – from polite conversation."

Following the Ryan announcement, Mary Katharine Ham wrote:

"The political press and President Obama alike claim they want a campaign
about big ideas, an adult debate about policy differences. Now they’ve got
it in spite of, not because of, Barack Obama. With Ryan on the ticket, the
debate should no longer be about contraception and the deferred
cancer-causing capabilities of Bain investments. It will be about the budget
and the $16-trillion debt, the unsustainable trajectory of the federal
government and the promises it’s already breaking to generations to come. It
will be about Simpson-Bowles and a federal government that hasn’t even
bothered to pass a budget since before the iPad existed. It will be about
how four years of grossly increased spending has stimulated us into the
worst recovery in American history, unless you happen to be an Obama donor
or crony. It will be about how creating new entitlement programs cannot
possibly fix the ones that are already broken. And, it will be about whether
we value an ever more dependent society or an ever more successful one."

Voegeli, Cooke and Ham are exactly right. Clearly, the distortions,
distractions and hyperbole you hear about Paul Ryan from the left and the
Obama campaign are the sounds of fear.