After a a quick scan of the reaction from Blogistan Left, I haven't seen a single "Uh oh." From HuffPo:
If Romney were to win with Ryan on the ticket, he would have a mandate to make sweeping changes not only to the size of government, but to programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are products of former President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program.The Randroids have been aching for this fight. Very well: If we must have it, let's have it. Let's make this election about Medicare and Social Security. Last year, an ABC News poll found that...
...65 percent of Americans oppose changing Medicare to a system in which the government would give seniors vouchers with which to buy private insurance. Opposition was essentially the same in a Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health survey when the idea came up 15 years ago.
The language may matter, in that even most Republicans, 56 percent, oppose Medicare vouchers, as do more than seven in 10 Democrats. And opposition soars to 84 percent of all Americans, including nearly three-quarters of Republicans, if government payments failed to meet the full cost of seniors' insurance coverage.They're quite the pair, Romney and Ryan: One of them avoids taxes by using schemes available only to the ultra-rich, while the other insists that the U.S. lacks the revenue to pay for Grandma's surgery.
Of course, Ryan has a history of advocating tax loopholes for his donors. He has also applied the label "class warfare" to any attempt to raise taxes on the very affluent, even as he advocates raising taxes on the middle class. Ryan's proposed budget would have given away trillions of dollars to corporations:
In all, those tax breaks amount to a $3 trillion giveaway to the richest Americans and corporations, according to the Tax Policy Center. Repealing the repatriation tax would add roughly $130 billion to that.If Romney loses, blame the Tea Party. They forced him to veer right at a time when candidates traditionally play to the center. Choosing Ryan will please the hard-liners and the Ayn Randroids, but it will alienate many swing state voters.
This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ryan insisted that the plan would generate the same amount of revenue as the government currently receives. In true Ryan form, though, he wouldn’t say how...
Given the many failures of our current president, Romney should be jogging miles ahead of Obama by now. The teabaggers fitted the Republican candidate with iron running shoes. I hope the GOP leadership understands this lesson. Then again, if they didn't learn from the Sharron Angle debacle, perhaps they are unteachable.
What a posthumous triumph for Ayn Rand! History may say that ghost of the Great Cigarette Hag destroyed the Republican party in what should have been their year of gold. The GOP could have had the strength of Atlas, but they chose to shrug.
15 comments:
In Case you are interested, Joseph, I have a new blog called Debt Neutrality.
Debt Neutrality would allow consumers to pay down their credit card and student debts with no more interest rate charges, penalties or fees, as long as they are not running up new debt at equal to or greater amounts.
Debt Neutrality could also be applied to country debt as well since the only one it would ultimately "hurt" are the elite billionaire and trillionaires. And yet, it would not really hurt them in the long run since they still get back their investment money and their money will actually retain more buying power in a reliable economy than one that is tottering.
Oh please, let this be true.
Check out my links, Sandro.
I'm reminded of the scene from The Dark Night Rises, when Commissioner Gordon is forced to choose between exile or death. Gordon chooses death, so he's sentenced to death by exile.
That's the choice the voters have in the 2012 election.
DM
I'd say that RMoney has chosen his Dick Cheney - a VP who is stronger-willed and much crazier than the nominal leader of the party.
The last time we had a VP lead the country behind the throne, it didn't work out too well. To borrow a phrase, the GOP forgets nothing and learns nothing.
There is only one serious candidate in the election, the sitting president.
Too bad the sitting president is a war criminal.
Too, too bad the sitting president is a republican.
And too bad the sitting President is also the guy who convened the Peterson "Catfood" Commission. The major parties are offering us a choice between a Republican who wants to starve us in our old age and a Republican-masquerading-as-a-Democrat who also wants to starve us in our old age.
Not much of a choice there, I'm afraid. I guess it's time to stock up on Friskies.
Every time I read that there is no difference between Obama/Biden and Romney/Ryan, I want to kick the dumb ass who says it in the crotch. Hard to excuse that much stupid.
Of course there's a difference, Ralph. Romney isn't pretending to be a Democrat. We're still torturing people, we're still holding people in indefinite detention even after they've been cleared, and now we're assassinating US citizens without charge. One thing we *haven't* done is jail any of the banksters.
Lest you forget, it was *Obama* who put Medicare cuts on the table in the first place.
As for your pointless threats, I realize it must be frustrating not to have a real argument. If you'd actually like to try, I'd be happy to send you my real name and address - but I don't think you'll find the experience either as enjoyable or as successful as you fancy.
Hmm. I've heard this song before. I think the lyrics go:
"There's no difference between Al Gore and GW Bush. So I'll vote for a REAL progressive - Ralph Nader!"
So we get de facto President Dick Cheney, with GWB as a semi-drunk figurehead for at least six years. (I suspect GWB actually did some real Presidentin' in the last two years of his term.)
Of course, if all the Florida votes had actually been counted, then Al Gore would have been on watch during 9/11. How nicely would the GOP have accepted a failure of that magnitude?
CO Guy: An even earlier example would be 1968. Nixon would never have been president if so many liberals had supported Humphrey instead of staying home. RFK/McCarthy voters hated Humphrey because he was LBJ's Vice-President.
I can understand the frustration felt by many on the left -- both the old left and the new -- back then.
But look at what happened after Tricky Dick got into office. Just one example: Nixon bombed Cambodia, which radicalized the population -- and suddenly the Khmer Rouge, which previously consisted of about 400 quasi-barbarians living in the jungle, gained popular support. And after that...
A lot of liberals despised HHH, perhaps with good reason. But 1968 was a case when men and women of good conscience should have voted for the lesser of two evils.
ColoradoGuy, it was the Naderites and Obots who brought us to this point. Nader screwed over the Green Party and all the nitwits who screeched for him in 2000 to be included are all but silent now that it's boring old women running in the Green Party. I'm voting Jill.
It's a very easy metric.
What has Obama done that merits reelection?
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