and hearty handshake to Paul Ryan, another racist, right-wing, Teabagging, grandmaw tossing-over-the-cliff opponent of our Righteous Bros: Barack and Joe!
Posted on 08/11/2012 7:01:17 PM PDT by Qbert
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.
"They chose a candidate who is 42, but looks 22, and is a professional Washington politician," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, a top adviser to John Edwards' 2008 campaign and former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. "He helps Romney with not a single state, not a single demographic and he won't turn a single undecided vote around. He also destroys Romney's argument that professional Washington insiders and politicians aren't qualified to govern. He's a disastrous pick that proves the Romney and Republicans are stuck in some kind of time capsule where they think they can win elections by debating obscure conservative theory."
Obama advisers also see Ryan's presence on the ticket as a way to drive home Obama's most successful TV ad of the campaign, according to copious internal focus group surveys in swing states. It's the one where Obama speaks straight to camera and says the "choice" in the election is about direction and priorities -- his versus Romney's and the latter's resemblance to the Bush era.
Top Obama advisers have been looking for a way to entice rank-and-file Democrats down ballot to adopt that rhetoric as their own, thereby creating a party-wide echo chamber throbbing with "choice" speeches so as to drown out Romney's attempt to win the White House through a throw-out the incumbent referendum pitch.
Since House and Senate Democrats are already well-schooled in criticizing Ryan and his budget (they've done so two years in a row), Team Obama now sees a new opportunity for synergy -- Obama and fellow Democrats for the first this campaign genuinely (as opposed to reluctantly and robotically) singing out of the same songbook.
The assessment in Chicago is that Ryan on the ticket gives Obama and any Democrat who cares to (many is the guess) a perfect opportunity to denounce tax cuts for the wealthy and a fundamental alteration of Medicare.
The charge that GOP-backed tax cuts for the rich and cuts to Medicare hobbled the Newt Gingrich-led Republican Revolution (at least as it related to the government shutdown with President Clinton), and Obama senior advisers believe it will work more effectively now. Why? Because middle-class anxiety is more pronounced and visceral. In essence, Obama's entire campaign to date has been aimed at taking economic doubts and worry -- which Romney has tried to pin on Obama -- and increasing them by portraying the GOP nominee as a predatory capitalist indifferent to middle class suffering. They now believe Ryan gives them a contemporary policy toehold in Washington to take that argument from the distant past (Bain Capital) and make it a cutting issue in Romney and Ryan's present-day campaign.
Which is why Obama's senior ranks see Ryan as a gift, and a choice one at that.
The only veep pick the Dems would have liked is Noam Chomsky.
"Obama and the Rats must be forgetting about the $500 BILLION they already gutted from Medicare."
Yep. If they want to open up that can of worms it won't be very pleasant for them...
I remember the same quotes from Dems about how they were ecstatic when Reagan was nominated.
And the American voters don't give a crap about either one of those two groups. In fact, most people wish they would just go away.
Yeah. I think we're going to do well in November.
Oh heck, that’s just lib drool. They all do it, all the time.
My guess is the Obama team has been throwing up all day.
I agree, but this doesn't seem so difficult to fix. People understand what a household budget is, and that you can have weekly, monthly, or even annual budgets for your household. They also understand that if you go over budget you run a deficit.
It just needs to be pointed out in straightforward terms that every minute, of every hour, of every day, of every week, for the entire year, for every year he's been in office, Obama has spent way more than the government had, and that he didn't even bother to make a budget to follow. It's pretty easy to make this case in a way that is compelling.
and had it been Romney/Rubio or Romney/Portman we would’ve heard the same crap from the a$$-clowns who have Joe Biden as their VP...
Democrats salivate as much as my 16 year old cat.
UH Huh....just keep talking that way you commies....Ameria is waking up to your lies....you’ll be drooling in NOVEMBER....like babies...and they’ll need a diaper change too
I have several kinfolk that are active duty. I can tell you how they feel about Obama and his administration. And if Zero was to attempt to impose some kind of martial law it’d be one hell of a party. Just wouldn’t last long...
No big deal, they drool on the bus windows too....
Obama knows one way, and one way only to deal with problems. Throw money at them. When it comes to understanding the economy and how to get America back on track, Obama isn’t in Paul Ryan’s league, the big leagues.
You might underestimate how difficult it is. Many do not have a clue what a family budget is...including my wife.
To give another example, many are confused about what it means to be rich. They see celebrities flaunting bling and think that spending a lot of money as proof of wealth. They don’t see shares of stock as wealth. For example, they think Bill Gates is wealthy because he has a fancy house. They see the government spend money and think that
is proof that the government is rich and has no problems.
What people who think like us don’t realize is that when “normal” people hear class warfare rhetoric, they interpret “rich” totally different from what we do.
The education can be done. But it won’t be easy. And it won’t be done by those who don’t understand the non-ideological voter, which is the swing voter.
It’s easy pickin’s for Dims when you have a large section of the electorate that is economically ignorant and/or on the dole.
and hearty handshake to Paul Ryan, another racist, right-wing, Teabagging, grandmaw tossing-over-the-cliff opponent of our Righteous Bros: Barack and Joe!
Major Garrett showed his Liberalism a LOT in the last few years. He IS a hack.
Are they salivating or wetting their pants?
I've had conversations with people about losing weight, and used the ‘balancing the checkbook’ analogy with them (spend more calories than you take in and you'll drain your fat account), and this concept comes as a surprise to them. It isn't that they can't understand. I don't have an answer.
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