As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted hours after Romney announced his pick in which it slammed Ryan as “callous” and claimed his attempt to control the nation’s out-of-control entitlements would leave the poor and the elderly sicker while also harming the unemployed and students. Not considering it advisable to even make a pretense of noting the GOP veep candidate’s strengths, the Times thought it advisable to go for the jugular first and worry about nuance later. We can expect the rest of the liberal mainstream media to do no less in the days and weeks that will follow.
However, it must be noted that the expectation by liberals that they can get away with such blatant demagoguery is not entirely without foundation. The pick of Ryan should energize the Republican base and will lend intellectual heft to a Romney campaign that has often seemed intent on merely waiting for the voters to fire Barack Obama rather than putting forward its own vision. But we know that “Mediscare” tactics employed by the Democrats have worked sometimes. And, as Times political blogger and statistical analyst Nate Silver pointed out on Wednesday, Ryan brings no obvious or immediate tactical political advantages to the Republicans. If Romney’s choice does anything it is to provide a test for the electorate. Are they prepared to listen to reasoned arguments articulated by Ryan about the need for entitlement reform, or will they succumb to simplistic liberal cant about pushing grandma over the cliff? As much as conservatives want to believe the American public is not so foolish or shortsighted as to simply accept the left’s defense of the status quo, we won’t know the answer to that question until November.
The assumption on the part of many observers that Ryan’s elevation is the result of Romney’s understanding that his campaign needed a turnaround in the same manner as many of the companies he built at Bain Capital may not be true. It may be that Romney came to the conclusion that Ryan was the best qualified candidate of all those on his short list and saw in him a kindred soul who could govern effectively with him. If so, I think he was right. Ryan is, as Romney described him, the intellectual leader of his party, and a willingness by the GOP standard-bearer to make an ideas maven his running mate speaks well for his judgment. But there should be no misunderstanding about the fact that a lot of the blind optimism about the election one heard from Republicans in recent months was unjustified. Romney did need to shake up the race and he has done so.
President Obama’s electoral liabilities are well-known. He has presided over a poor economy and his major accomplishments — the enactment of a massive stimulus spending bill and his signature health care plan — are deeply unpopular. But his historic status as the first African-American president and the darling of the liberal media gives him advantages that are just as important. Without them, he would, as a president who faces the people with a higher unemployment rate than he inherited and with negative job approval ratings, be facing an epic defeat this fall rather than possessing a slim lead in the polls.
All of which means Romney’s decision to directly challenge the president by presenting conservative ideas that provide a strong contrast to the Democrat’s grim defense of the liberal status quo is a good idea. Romney can’t win by being passive. But it must be admitted that there is no guarantee that the liberals’ bet that scare tactics will prevail over the demand for rational reform will not prevail.
If anyone can provide a positive and well thought out answer to the deluge of fear mongering we will be subjected to in the coming months it is Ryan. It should also be remembered that just two years ago, the strength of the ideas of the Tea Party helped the GOP win a landslide in the 2010 midterms. The president and his backers may believe his presence on the ticket combined with an all-out assault to demonize Romney and Ryan will overwhelm the calls for an end to the endless cycle of taxing and spending. The battle has been joined and it will be up to the American people to determine which of these strategies is the one that will triumph.
Interesting take.
"and it will be up to the American people to determine which of these strategies is the one that will triumph."—-Really? This assumes the American people can objectively assess two competing arguments. But (a) they have shown little capacity for this at least since 2006 and (b) half of the American people are already bought-off and hooked on government, so they really can't exercise objective judgement.
BDZ – with all due respect – and I mean that sincerely – I don't believe you really believe what you say. If you did, you would disappear into a cave and give up. The fact that you remain engaged is good! As frustrating as these past few years have been in many ways, I think faith in the American people is warranted – just look at Governor Walker, the 2010 results, Governor Christie, Senator Brown, etc. As for your point b), I don't buy it. The people most dependent on the government thankfully don't vote in large numbers. I'm not sure what is meant by half of Americans are bought off and hooked on government – I hear it a lot. Is it a reference to mortgage deductions and such, for example? If so, it's pretty weak tea.
"The people most dependent on the government thankfully don't vote in large numbers. n nThis is a very strange claim. The entire Obama re-election strategy is based on the rather obvious belief that that is false. The examples of Obama trying tp bribe the poor, blacks and Hispanics into voting for him are literally endless. Taking a cue from "The One" Liz "Cherokee" Warren in Massachusetts is currently being sued sued for trying to get the state to mobilize welfare precipitants to vote for her. Obama is doing exactly the same, he just hasn't been sued yet. Obama is also cynically trying to eliminate the photo ID requirement for voting. If you can't figure out what's behind this you need some serious help.
if you are running on a platform of "we can't win because half of the American people are slaves" then maybe you can get a John Galt award but, we-can't-win-because-you-guys-are-idiots is presumably not the platform Romney and Ryan will run on but "we can do better, you can do better, you deserve better".
There's something about this sentence that bothers me: n"Without them, he would, as a president who faces the people with a higher unemployment rate than he inherited and with negative job approval ratings, be facing an epic defeat this fall rather than possessing a slim lead in the polls." nThere is a correlation between the two pieces of evidence presented here. I would argue that Obama's (long-term) negative job approval ratings are more likely to be evidence that Mr. Tobin's overall assessment of Romney's current position is too negative. nI'm not saying it's in the bag (obviously), but I think we have to be very careful how we assess the state of the race. Too many Republicans are getting spooked by polls that are, frankly, not believable. (Does anyone seriously think Obama is up by 7-10%?) The consequences of overreacting could be devastating if Romney feels compelled to do things simply to reassure his supporters – whose suggestions, it should be noted, are all over the place. Mr. Tobin hints at that early on, mentioning that some see the Ryan selection as an effort to shake things up. My goodness – if we are already rearranging the deck chairs, before the nomination is official, the fat lady should start warming-up and the lifeboats lowered. nSo far Romney is keeping his head. Come to think of it, that's what I would expect someone like him to do.
The greatest Republican since Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, said: n n
nIke said this long before the GOP made its Faustian bargain with the South, so that now, the GOP's "reactionary fringe" has become its mainstream. n nAlas, there is no Republican with the national stature who today could repudiate the reactionary fringe. Ronald Reagan had stature, but he was part of the fringe Eisenhower was referring to. (Think, Ronald Reagan with the stature of an Eisenhower!) There is only Mitt Romney, who is the closest GOP candidate in policy to an Eisenhower since Eisenhower, but who is forced by the nature of the current GOP to pander to the lunatics that control the party and inevitably, tragically, to appear as a flip-flopper. n nTHIS is Romney's biggest handicap. Not Obama, not the Democrats, but his own party. If Romney had the spunk of a Teddy Roosevelt — or, say, a Ross Perot — he'd bolt from the party and run independently as…a Roosevelt Progressive. To be sure, such a run would be quixotic and futile, just as Roosevelt's was. n nWhich lends irony to the headline, "Demagoguery versus Ideas". To say that Obama is responsible for the current economy is like saying Franklin Roosevelt was responsible for the Great Depression. In both cases, economic ruin was brought about by the unbridled rapacity of those whom the GOP represents. In both cases, FDR and Obama could only be criticized for not pulling America out of the hole dug by the robbers of the right quickly enough. Of course, unlike FDR, Obama has had a Senate minority expressly and single-mindedly dedicated to sabotaging his presidency. n nWhat Tobin calls "liberal demagoguery" is, in fact, inconvenient truth, the only antidote of which, for the GOP and the right, is the greatest lie machine since Dr. Goebbels. Tobin talks about the vast Obamaphile media, when in truth Obama must run against the almost 100% right-wing talk radio, which pervades the brain cells of every automobile commuter in America every working day, not to mention characters like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Richard Mellon Scaife, whose billions have been decreed speech by the right-wing's hand-picked Supreme Court majority. n nWhat I mean is, Mitt Romney cannot be Mitt Romney, or even his great father, much less an Eisenhower, because the Republican party is no longer the party of those men, but has devolved into the party of that reactionary fringe which authentic Republicans like Eisenhower so despised.
If you want BHO's Socialist government, go ahead and vote for him.
That fact that "fringe" Reagan was elected and re-elected in a landslide means that he wasn't fringe. n
lbjack, of course I don't know how old you are, or how much political history you have read, but your tirade against the GOP and the accusation that the "fringe" has become the mainstream leaves me with the impression that you really don't know much about either. Ike—for whom I have enormous respect—and almost all the GOP were considered reactionary by many opinion-makers and Democrats. I remember a joke that went: what's the name of a toy that you wind up and moves around in circles for four years without doing anything–an Eisenhower. I think it is simply a fact that—as lbjack shows—any party that is not left will be called reactionary, even by its own members. One more point. I'm sure lbjack is a nice person, but I think it is repulsive to use Goebbels as an example to support his point. Someone once said that the first person to compare something to the Nazis in a political argument loses. Well, lbjack, you've lost.
That's called Godwin's Law. n n"A term that originated on Usenet, Godwin's Law states that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Godwin's Law has effectively forfieted the argument."
Otherwise known as Argumentum ad Hitlerum
FYI: Your second-to-last sentence refers to what's known as Godwin's law.
Actually Obama is responsible for making it WORSE. Record debt, record unemployment and record numbers on welfare. These all occurred during the past 4 years. He didn't create it, he just increased spending to the point that we are going off the fiscal cliff.
Conservative talk radio is irrelevant because swing voters do not listen to talk radio. (Also, conservative talk is not broadcast during prime morning commuting hours, and most commuters listen to traffic news like WTOP anyway.) The Moderates and Independents watch MSM TV for their news. Period. Since those groups are the deciders of the swing states, the totally Obamaphile media has an oversize impact.
Have to disagree, Andrew. n nTalk radio is enormously influential precisely because it speaks to the conservative electorate. That electorate is fully 40% of the voting public (according to Gallup), twice as many as identify themselves as "liberal." The remaining 40% of the electorate is made up of mainly center-right voters with a minority of center-left. So for any Republican to get elected as President, they must have the full support of the conservative block of voters. This is a huge reason, btw, why McCain lost: conservatives did not turn out for him like they did for Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. n nWho told you that moderates and independents watch MSM Tv for news? Have you seen the audience share of the MSM news shows? They are pathetically small. MSM news is basically preaching to the liberal choir. Fox News (like it or hate it) has more viewers than all the MSM channels combined. It's not even close. Go look at the Drudge Report which usually has the viewing numbers regularly posted. Also, who told you that conservative talk is not on during the morning commute. My experience in the D.C./Maryland market is that all the AM channels have conservative talk during the commute: WMAL has Chris Plante, WCBM has Sean and Frank, etc.. If you're not listening to ESPN or NPR on the drive to work in D.C. you are listening to conservative talk radio.
We can't continue on the path we're on and everyone knows that. And Obama intends and always intended to transform us into his idea of what constitute's justice. There is no reason to trust his understanding of justice, it is biased. n nI'm not all that comfortable with Ryan's attachment to Rand, but I'm no expert on her philosophy so my offended taste can't prevent me from giving him a fair hearing. And I will. n nI don't think this increases Romney's chances of winning but it does begin a conversation and in that sense it begins to "prepare a people." n nWe can't possibly construct policy with the single mother with children as top priority. n nI'm a registered conservative who can lean left. But progressives never speak of the duties that must accompany assistance. n nIt's almost impossible for the rich to help the poor because disorder is such a big part of the lives of the poor and the rich just want to throw money at them, along with BS self-esteem activities. The poor are helped by opportunity more than anything else. And not made up workfare masking as opportunity. n nMy first job was a CETA job. Secretary to the "Director of County Nutritional Task Force." n nMy boss was a young Black man named Allen. He wore high-heeled sneakers, drove a white cadillac and was earnest. I look back on that year and recall the good feeling between us even though race was such a painful and poignant dividing line. Yet there was hope and a better opinion of one another than partisans of race share now. n nOh, and the "Nutritional Task Force?" It was a bust.
I stated this on another post, if dems scaremongering worked so well why did we wipe them out in 10 when they tried it? The people have had enough of this reckless, mindless spending by mostly dems. The top issuesnaremthe economy, jobs and the deficit. Obama is now going to have to talk about thes things and why he has destroyed the economy. We now have record numbers on unemployment and receiving food stamps-why?
I wouldn't write the electorate off as incapable of hearing the truth. And writing if off because of 2006 and 2008 is partisan beyond measure. n nPresident Bush abandoned the defense of his wars. And he had no right to do that. Don't blame the electorate for finding the mismanagement of that war, the loss of not finding the WMD, good reason for calling Bush's intentions and the whole enterprise into question. n nAnd as for the collapse of 2008, President Bush could only read from the page. He never addressed the collapse in a detailed address to the Nation. And it was his duty to do that, whether he was despised at that point or not. People would have listened and he would have helped us understand it. n nJay Cost says that ObamaCare makes a pitch to seniors easier. And I think he's right.
Read the NYT eidtiral linked here. It screams of pride in it's intellectual bankruptcy. These losers are proud Luddites. "The One" has squandered $6 trillion in less than four years for what? Essentially nothing. Stimulus for his friends, endless handouts and Obama stamps to the benighted who make up his base and then just unspeakable incompetence. The NYT is failing financially. It posted a $183 million dollar operating loss last quarter. It has been losing money and readership literally for decades. And who do they blame? Those that disagree with them. Those who have constructive ideas (like Paul Ryan) Those who mock the NYT for playground style bullying combined with sneering immaturity not to mention dishonest reporting. The NYT has become an embarrassment and is largely irrelevant outside of the Tri-State area. Plus, they are unhappy about it and pouting.
Unemployment rates: n nFebruary 2001: 4.2% nFebruary 2009: 8.3% nAugust 2012: 8.3% n nWhy di conservatives keep pretending that obama's opolicies have been bad for unemployment, and that a return to, and diubling down on, bush's policies would be good for unemployment?
Here is what is going to decide the election in a nutshell. If there are more people that want jobs than those that want a handout, RR wins. If the other, Obama wins.
Perfect commentary and spot on Mr. Tobin. I think we need to hone in on one point. Without the liberals media's adoration, Obama would not be in the running. We, the American people need to change this. We must hold the press accountable and not allow them to become what is essentially the propaganda arm of the Democrat party. nAlready many are voting with their feet by not consuming biased media. nBut the networks have a captive audience of low information voters who are turning in to get the local news. nWe must write and call our local television stations and the networks and demand fair coverage. We can also target their advertisers. These are not activities which conservatives and libertarians traditionally like to engage in, but their bias is persuading uninformed voters to vote against our, and the country's, best interest.
Mr. Tobin, please, please, stop ingesting and then passing along these phony opinion polls that the Obama Campaign is coordinating. You are doing the Leftists' work for them, unwittingly I'm sure. n nEvery one of these polls had deep flaws that compromised their reliability. Stick with Rasmussen's running polls of likely voters that are properly weighted with partisan splits. They consistently show Romney ahead.
Boy, you've definitely got that right. I can't recall an election where the polling methodology has been as consistently sloppy as this one. n nEven the recent Fox News poll was a joke. It supposedly shows Obama ahead by 9 points, but if you look closer, you see that 44% of the respondents in that poll identified themselves as Democrats. That's 7-8 points more than their percentage of the general population. So of course the poll is going to show Obama with a big lead. n nThe only two polls worth watching are Gallup and Rasmussen. They conduct more polls than anyone else and they have the most experience at coming up with polling samples that accurately reflect the demographics of the overall electorate. They both have the race as a dead heat right now.
TS, dream on. If you throw out the outliers Pew (Obama +10) and Rassmussen (Romney +4) you consistently show the President 5-7 points ahead. Conservatives can cling to Scott Rassmussen all they want but across-the-board numbers don't lie. Rassmussen also shows his true colors by going on Weekly Standard cruises with right wingers and parroting right wing talking points on every conservative talk show imaginable. Rassmussen is just a notch above Frank Luntz in terms of tooting for right.
Well thanks for the smart and, perhaps more importantly, respectful reply. A lot of folks on these forums don't like to be disagreed with. The percentages you cite for Latinos and blacks, both as part of the total population and prospective turnout are a matter of "intense" debate right now. I have no crystal ball and will leave the shouting to others. But I do know that almost all the polls, except for Rasmussen put Obama ahead or, in the case of the most recent Fox poll way ahead (+9%). I continue to believe that the Obama/Axelrod plan is to buy off all the benighted poor and ill- educated "new voters" they can while doing everything possible to refuse to talk about ideas for solving our budget/financial problems or Obama's record. It can't possibly get more cynical. The LSM is going along, for now. But this is so brazen even some of the usual incorrigibles are feeling queasy. In my view Obama should be down 70-30 and the election a mere formality. Obviously that is not the case.
The Fox poll you mention did trouble me a bit. I went and looked at the actual poll and discovered the reason for the unexpected result. They polled 55 Hispanics in the original group, they then went and extracted 155 Hispanic polling responses from other polls and added that group, 170 hispanic responses to the total group. n nOut of roughly 900 in the total polling group, 170 were hispanic. Since our hispanic friends tend to vote democrat, this has skewed the result nearly the same way the deliberate oversampling of democrats have skewed the results with Pew, Quinnipiac, NYT, NBC, PPP, and all of the other democrat sponsered polls.
BcdErick, a couple of things about the polls you mentioned above. First, isn't interesting that those Obama for President positive polls are coming out exactly when Obama's approval numbers in both Gallup and Rasmussen have reached basically its lowest numbers? Second, one thing about Rasmussen, it endeavors to poll LV, and usually their samples are much higher and therefore have the possibility of being closer to the real sentiment. As for the Fox News polls, if you have been keeping track of them, you would know that surprisingly, more often than not, they always come up with results that are more favorable to Democrats. I always wondered why. Could it be that they their sample is distorted in favor of Democrats because they don't want the criticism they already get for having not fallen into doing propaganda for Democrats???
LOL!!! Democrats "learning their lesson"? Don't count on it. Liberals genuinely believe that most Americans agree with their worldview and simply ignore or dismiss any evidence to the contrary. n n"We didn't really get our butts kicked in 2010, we simply didn't get our message out."
The November election will show whether the (formerly) United States of America accepts reality or wishes to believe in fairy dust and a world where you don't have to produce in order to prosper.
For decades mathematically proficient people have warned that we are on a collision course with reality, that there isn't enough resources to sustain entitlements for baby-boomer senior citizens. Faced with certain doom the electorate has responded with: 'we don't give a damn, we still want it and we'll just let someone else pay for it' Okay, let's see how all of this works out in the end. n nGot gold?
Just as many people now support Obamacare as do those who oppose it and it's only getting more popular. Mr. Tobin needs to get more up to date on the polls.
Just to clarify, I'm an independent voter who is extremely disappointed with Obama's presidency, but absolutely shocked and horrified by the Tea Party, so if your intent is to browbeat me with conservative platitudes, shove off. I applaud the honorable member from Wisconsin for having the courage to even put forth a plan to tackle entitlement spending, the third rail of politics in the US. But having read the above comments, the Conservatives in this country have no clue what that entails. n nMedicare and Social Security are by far the most costly and most broadly distributed entitlements, and reform of them will require bipartisan political compromise, including some form of both tax increases and spending cuts. To suggest for a second that the majority of black and hispanic voters are on public assistance is a ridiculous wing nut Tea Party myth, and if conservatives cannot see the racism in that assertion, their party is doomed in a country that will be minority majority in 10 years. 45 million Americans are on food stamps, the least restrictive assistance program, and that number is the highest it's been since Food Stamps became an entitlement program. Some smaller number of these folks are eligible for TANF (time limited cash assistance) and or Medicaid (healthcare for families with children and disabled indigent adults). A plurality of those 45 million people are white people, no real surprise there, whites make up almost 70% of the population. That's about 15% of the population and nowhere near 50% of minorities. Also, these people tend not to vote reliably, so it would be ludicrous for Obama's electioneers to try and buy their vote. n nBy contrast 50 million people are on Medicare, the the healthcare entitlement for Seniors. That number will increase exponentially as Boomers age, as will the Social Security income entitlement for seniors. Most of these recipients are older, wealthier, whiter and more likely to vote. These are the people you have to convince of the need to reform entitlement spending, and they already vote largely Republican. A one sided, partisan, demonization of all entitlement spending will fall flat, barring a brazen use of the nuclear option by an unpopular congress controlled by Republicans. And such a power grab would almost certainly spell the end of the GOP as a political force with any influence. You wing nuts need to fight the future by co-opting these people not driving them away with ideological populist rhetoric. n
I listened to 2 shorts speeches by Ryan and Romney today. If Obama is re-elected is because too many people have allowed to have a distorted vision of true values. I hear often times liberals talk about values, I hear Obama talk about values but when you get to what they are talking about, they are not values at all. Do you what their values are? Government is God and they make up government. I guess now we can understand why many in the Media (Chris Matthews anyone?) worship the guy. Obama and government has taken the place of God for them.
TS_Alfabet: n nNate Silver studies and keeps up with all the polls: He finds that Rasmussen reflects a systematic bias towards the Republicans. (They improve the agreement with the final results by changing their weighting 2 weeks before the election. But for all the preceding period, they are consistently a bit high on the GOP.) n nNate is well known for having called the 2008 election results correctly for 49 out of 50 states.
This election will be decided by a single demographic: white women, especially single white women. nI see Ryan as neutral for this group: attractive family man, but a "cold hearted" budget-cutter. Obama has a good message for these women: "I will take care of you." Not clear to me what R&R have to say to these people, especially since Ryan opposes both abortion contraception. I assume that Romney wouldn't have picked him if he hadn't thought this one through, but I can't figure it out. Romney needs to carry the entire white electorate, not just half of it.