Posted on 08/11/2012 8:26:54 PM PDT by neverdem
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, and vice presidential candidate Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wave at the crowd during a campaign event, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2012 in Norfolk, Va.
Thanks to Paul Ryan, Campaign 2012 is now a two-front class war.
Mitt Romney wanted the election to be a straight-up referendum on President Obama’s handling of the economy. Obama responded by framing the race as a choice between an incumbent middle-class champion and a corporate raider whose plans would only help the rich.
(RELATED: Romney's Pick of Ryan Brings Medicare to Center Stage)
Polls suggested Obama’s frame was winning out. Romney continues to trail, even though voters dislike Obama’s handling of the economy and trust Romney more to fix it, and even though Romney has spent a lot of time and money pushing a narrative of Obama hating success.
Poor and middle-class workers tolerate fewer attacks on the rich in America than in other developed nations; most of them still believe that if they work hard enough, they’ve got a shot to get rich, too. Still, it’s tough to win a class war squarely on the side of the wealthy. Aspirational voters don’t like the possibility that government policy is rigged to help the rich get richer and keep the middle class from getting ahead. That’s where Obama’s attacks have connected.
(RELATED: Strong Rapport with Romney Brings Ryan to Top)
That’s also why putting Ryan on the ticket is a chance for Romney to turn the class attacks back on Obama, reframing the election as a choice between a challenger who wants to boost the middle class and a president who wants to funnel hard-earned middle-class tax dollars to the poor.
America is about to learn a lot about Ryan’s signature legislative proposal, the House Republican budget. Democrats will howl about its goal of converting Medicare to a “premium support” system that gives seniors checks to buy health coverage. That’s the risk of picking Ryan, as Republicans well know.
(RELATED: Romney-Ryan Ticket Launch 'Blue State' Bus Tour)
Republicans, though, could use the Ryan budget as a class-war weapon. It reduces federal spending and brings down the debt – ideas middle-class voters love in concept. And it does so, over the long term, by carving huge chunks of spending growth off programs to help the poor. By 2050, the Congressional Budget Office estimated this year, the Ryan plan would reduce spending on Medicaid and the federal children’s health insurance program to one-quarter of the level it is otherwise projected to reach.
Tack on Romney’s proposed tax cut – similar to Ryan’s plan in both the size of its reduction in marginal rates and the lack of detail about what tax expenditures would go away to offset lost revenue – and you’re looking at a decidedly conservative class appeal: more money for middle class workers, less for the wards of the government.
(RELATED: Mitt's Veep App Gets Scooped)
Romney ran early iterations of this argument all last week, with his claims – refuted by independent fact-checkers – that Obama was stripping work requirements from federal welfare programs. Ryan scales up the argument, quickly. It’s no accident that Ryan’s introductory bus tour will roll through blue-collar Virginia under the banner of the “Romney Plan for a Stronger Middle Class.”
The strategy carries big risks. Worst case for Republicans, the move could fire up a less-enthused Democratic base and turn swing voters against them. This is what Democratic consultants Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert predicted in July, in a strategy memo drawn from polling and focus groups focused squarely on Ryan’s plan.
“Obama’s lead against Romney more than doubles when the election is framed as a choice between the two candidates’ positions on the Ryan budget– particularly its impact on the most vulnerable,” the consultants wrote, adding that Obama makes “significant gains” among unmarried women, young voters, and Latinos when voters hear specific details about how the Ryan budget would affect education, the poor, and the elderly.
But in a best-case Republican scenario, the new frame puts Democrats on their heels and lets Romney steal the “hope” card from the former Hope and Change candidate.
Obama would be stuck defending welfare and Medicaid instead of jabbing Romney for high-income tax cuts. Republican donors and core conservative voters would be energized. Aspirational middle-class voters would see Romney as the optimist and Obama as the defeatist: The Republican wants them to get rich. The Democrat wants them dependent on the state. That’s a choice election the GOP would take any year.
Yeah, good luck with that. IMO, the Romney-Ryan ticket is a yawner.
Yep. No pandering to former slaves, former Aztecs, former something or other survivors, present poofters and other preverts!
Incumbent middle-class champion?? Who? Where?
And for those of us at the tail end of the Baby Boom (dob 1960)....
WE”RE STILL SCREWED!
How so? If you are under 55, with current Medicare system you will have nothing..zero..nada..because it is going bankrupt in 10-15 years.
With Ryan’s plan you will get vouchers to shop for your own health insurance, which fosters competition and hence reduced costs. So there is very good chance you will get at least some help.
With Social security, if you are under 55, you can put portion of your FICA tax in your own plan which will be divorced from government interference, and you can even leave the money to your children.
Hillarious. :^D
But this is the whole war on poverty issue. The war on poverty -— poverty won.
Medicaid sucks. You are more likely to die ON medicaid than no insurance!!!
a study pointed this out.
Education. Head Start does not work. No gains after 1 year. Pell Grants.
They have jimmied up these two programs doubling and tripling.
What does it get you? You get cut $3000-$5000 check by attending one class. It raises the tuition rates. b/c of subsidizing.
It’s DEATH AND DESTRUCTION BY GOVERNMENT OF HEALTHCARE
AND EDUCATION. AND OBAMA’s BIG IDEA IS MORE OF THE SAME.
INVESTMENT HE CALLS IT.
I think this is the nightmare scenario for Obama. Ryan ticket
Obama has no new ideas, never had a new idea in 4 years.
The same liberal Carter big government liberal. AT least Carter was somewhat
pro market???? deregulation of airlines???
NOw Obama wants to take over manufacturing and other industries
like auto industries?? WTF?????
Romney-Ryan could be the idea ticket. New ideas. GAO, get rid of
duplicate programs. Welfare reform.
Why dump money down a rat hole like the stimulus?
After this election the demographics of this country change so dramatically there will never again be an American who sits at his kitchen table, thinking about his own bills, reading the papers while rubbing his head thinking "how the hell are the clowns in Washington ever going to dig us out of the mess they've gotten us into?"
That kind of American, that kind of American, is gone, finished, done in 4 years. Replaced by the gimme-gimme entitlement moochers. Lights out. Good-night Irene.
I think that Mitt’s slip of the tongue, “President Ryan” means he figures that he has a poor chance and that Ryan is the future hope of the party.
So far as Social Security is concerned. I ran across this information. The cap for salaries subject to the SS tax used to be 90% of all earners, top income around $106,000 about 5 years ago. Now, however, salaries at the top have expanded so much that a cap at the 90% level should be $215,000, but in fact is only $110,000 which is now somewhere in the 80% range. Supposedly increasing immediately to the 90% level would reduce SS shortfall by around 36%. If Ryan wants to support middle class wage earners, and retirees then he should push this change asap.
True, but we knew that from the start. I’m just a year older than you but I realized long time ago that the Ponzi scheme they call Social Security was not going to be around by the time I retired, so I have not factored it into my reasoning.
I’ll have to work until I die, there will be no pension for me — unless I want to quit now and be a useless drone until the crash comes.
Yep!
Pigs at the trough openly stuck their hands in the till in 2008 and put us trillions into debt ..... and now it comes back to bite them on the ass. Amazing how that happens.
And at the worst possible moment, with a Stalinist cabal waiting obviously for years in the wings, to push aside the last of the liberals and take us into a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian dictatorship. Thanks, piggie Republicans!
As for Ryan being an "aspirational" UMC candidate .... looking at the map seems to have more explanatory power. He's a Battleground State moderate Republican who knows how to speak Budget. Looks like a pretty-obvious strategy to me!
So that's what Serpent Head has been up to. Wargaming every Republican nominee and VP possibility and focus-grouping the election to death, just like Slick did with his Chinese reptile money in 1995.
At least you won't be getting snuffed out by Bill Ayers's Death Panels, like those of us in the leading-edge of the Boom, and the War Babies.
Who did you want??
LOL! I think Romney's choice of Ryan was aimed more at preventing conservatives from leaving in droves!
She was annihilated by the media and yes McCain never fought back but my point is what we need is a candidate to better appeal to the base without the choice being to controversial and Ryan fits that criteria.
Face it, it wouldn't matter who the choice was they would be attacked and marginalized by the media and the libs who control the media. The big hit on Palin was she was “inexperienced”. Ryan has 14 years experience so that won't fly plus the image he portrays is one of a clean cut man with a beautiful family and to top it off a man who can speak intelligently on the issues.
He needs to get out there immediately and define himself before the sleaze on the Left do it for him. Romney has a ton of money which he cannot spend until the end of the Convention but the Super Pacs have raised a lot of cash and should be and probably are going to spend it talking about Romney and Ryan being the “Bring America Back” guys.
My 2 cents anyway.
Romney’s Choice of Ryan Aimed at Winning.
There. Fixed it.
Romney/Ryan 2012
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