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Interrupting Olympics coverage with a Chuck Todd Special Report, NBC announced tomorrow’s 8:45am Eastern time announcement by Mitt Romney is that Wisconsin Congressman and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan will run as his Vice-Presidential nominee. This puts the most reliable GOP base component, the Olds, in jeopardy, as Chairman Ryan is best known among the AARP set for his proposal to end Medicare as we know it.
During FDL Late Night, Swopa provides excellent on-the-fly analysis of this most recent Romney flip-flop:
To paraphrase Woody Allen, the hardest part of being a cynic about the Romney campaign is keeping up. Deciding they have to name Mitt’s VP now — more than 2 weeks before the GOP convention, with the Olympics not over yet, and on a Saturday morning, no less! — is as pure a sign of panic as you can get. Republicans are famously obsessed with winning each and every short-term news cycle, and Team Romney must have decided that a mid-August weekend of Sunday talk shows asking whether Mitt’s candidacy is in trouble was a fate that had to be avoided at all costs.
Andrea Mitchell looked almost embarrassed to relay to Chuck Todd her news nugget of this story: relaying the news to second-time bridesmaid Tim “Bridge Fall Down” Pawlenty was Tagg Romney, the candidate’s son. Because, you know, Mitt doesn’t like to spend his time with losers.
70 Comments
What took you so long getting this up?
:)
Mitt’s shown his fear. I wonder what Team O has planned for tomorrow afternoon, now, on the fly. Bomb Syria? Arrive in London for the gold medal B-ball game?
Is anybody around with keys?
This could go FP before Suzanne’s at 10fdl….
I anxiously await the “there’s no difference between the tickets” crowd.
Because there demonstrably is, on an economic, tax, Medicare, Medicaid and SocSecurity basis at a minimum by legislation offered.
It’s funny — the last two GOP Veep noms, Patrick has told me about. He came in the bedroom that Friday morning after the DNC four years ago, shook me awake and said “It’s Palin! Of ALASKA!” to which I replied “Get me ET on the phone, now!”
Tonight, I knew the Norfolk announcement was coming, and was in the den on the laptop gabbing with Swopa’s commenters when he called from the big TV, “It’s Chuck Todd — you’ll want to see this! Oh, it’s PAUL RYAN! And TAGG told T-Paw!”
I get no Veep news unfiltered….
Really Teddy I thought you were faster on the DRAW!!! ☺
*heh* Just by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin, Teddy…! ;-)
It was a toss up, with Paul Ryan as VP, Obama wins in a landslide.
Heh. Once could say that you get Badgered. ;)
Early and often, sir.
Hmm. Do I want my Social Security benefits cut with soaring rhetoric and self-deprecating humor by Obama & Biden, or with business experience and earnest seriousness by Romney & Ryan?
Decisions, decisions …
Putting the Olds in play is about the stupidest thing Mitt could do. Many people said so, but like any good American CEO, Mitt plowed ahead despite best advice.
Will the CEO class ruin America? Not for lack of trying.
Idiot.
It means Mitt is very worried about his New Base and has decided his Old Base has died off enough to disrespect. It also means Obama will need to make some very clear pledges to the Olds about Social Security and Medicare, which could put his dreams of A Grand Bargain on indefinite hold.
In other words, Mitt Romney may save the social safety net tomorrow.
This is nothing but a scam to keep Obama in place. That’s why TPTB picked Thurston and Lovey Howell, diamond dripping elites to oppose him. Now they upped the ante withCount Shrugsula, hater of working people, for vp.
Everyone knows that Obama is a straight up lying con man and that he works for the elite to the tune of turning some 21Million in the streets. He’s done so much for the elite and excused so much fraud and crime against the American people on the Dems tab which just confuses everyone. So they picked someone despicable to run against him to make it seem like we picked this abuse again.
I picked the Vampire Paul Ryan months ago using this logic.
Totally called it.
I will say that Oily Bomber, won’t immediately hand over the new, enhanced Bunker Busters to Bibi…!
Suzanne’s got Late Late Night up now!
Up here in Canuckistan, the difference has been obvious throughout the Repub nomination.
Romney/Ryan will make McCain/Palin seem like a good idea …
It’s like clockwork… so predictable
The Paul Ryan Wikipedia Edits Begin
And I’m sure he’ll keep those pledges—for the Olds. Meanwhile, us sub-Olds are going to see our benefits cut so we can keep financing the tax cuts for the hedge-fund and dressage crowd. Treasury Secretary Bowles will see to that.
There’s no doubt that there wil be some fighting involved to keep SocSec and Medicare intact. No Doubt at all.
But who do you want to fight? You have a knife.
- There’s a guy with a gun, that you’ve seen operate a couple years, so you know his tactics and weaknesses.
- There’s a guy with a tank, who will go full-on crazy
One of them will be your opponent. Just no doubt about that.
I know the odds I prefer in the next fight.
Maybe just maybe “putting the Olds in play” galvanizes them to stop Obama’s cat food plans as well? Hidden dividend?
Is Ryan really such a liability? I have never really seen him in action. Readers here may be making a mistake if they think that just because his politics are odious that people won’t vote for him!
@textynn
In the FDL echo chamber your comment has a certain appeal.
I want to be able to watch Nancy Pelosi press ‘our’ guy to keep his promises, not see her roll over for a new guy with a ‘mandate.’
Yes he is a liability.
But Rmoney thinks he’s one of the brilliant young minds of the GOP. Recall that one of their last brilliant young minds was Newt and, before him, Dan Quayle. So you can see their difficulty.
My guess is they will pop the cork on the good champagne, put their feet up and have a laugh.
Dream on, bro! This “election” could quickly be spun into a debate about which ticket is “more serious” about cutting the deficit and “dealing with (i.e. cutting) Social Security and Medicare”.
As an aside, I happened to catch the last ten minutes of that entertainment/news program called the PBS Newshour and saw a couple of political pundits complain that, thus far, the presidential election campaign ads failed to discuss the “real issues”. I am a f’ing cynic. It’s pretty obvious why both tickets are avoiding any real discussion/debate of the issues that matter to most Americans. If both tickets were forced to discuss the issues of unemployment, low wages, jobs being shipped overseas, and a financial sector that is committing industrial scale fraud and theft with impunity, voters would quickly discover that there really was ZERO difference between the two tickets and that Romney and Obama are mirror images of each other (i.e. Obamacare = Romneycare) and actually were both in agreement to cut the Federal Budget, layoff public sector workers, cut Medicare and Social Security, continue deregulating the economy, and continue the unofficial policy of driving worker wages and living standards down to make American labor “more competitive” with (i.e. just as exploitable as) Chinese labor. Having discovered this, who other than stupid idiots who continue to act as free uncompensated excuse artists for both major parties would vote for either ticket? (Low turnout forecast for 2012 elections.)
I see this as a bit scary, actually, and quite possibly a good move for the R’s. Despite the crazy unfairness (or just craziness) of the budget plan that first made him famous, I recall that Paul Ryan has been praised in the past as one of the Very Serious People, and I expect that he will be similarly praised beginning a few hours from now until after 5 November.
But it’s not just the media’s praising of him as Very Serious that will be the only problem: His presence will allow more media play for the likes of Erskine and Bowles and Peterson and other budget scolds as well. Furthermore, especially given the Republican Super PAC money waiting in the wings, I now can see the formulation of a concerted effort to drive the debate toward financial issues, with the promise that Romney/Ryan can resolve them.
I’m not with the positive and smug attitude of many here; I’m worried that the U.S. public can be swayed yet again to vote against their own interests by the propaganda onslaught that will begin very soon and last until election day.
I shudder when I image Romney/Ryan winning. Yikes!
I share your fear.
But I think Obama — and Biden, especially — can be pressed to illustrate the contrasts enough to make promises that Nancy Pelosi might make them keep when they are re-elected.
No one wants grandma moving in with them, which is what Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan means. Especially since you’ll have to pay for her meds, too.
Wow. What a terrible pick!
The Republicans didn’t just lose the WH, they also just lost the House of Representatives.
Remember this, the GOP won the House in 2010 because of Medicare. Obamacare cutting $500B from Medicare was the responsive chord that swung a LOT of races. The prior midterm (2006), the GOP was +0– tied– for voting seniors. In 2010, the GOP was +21 (and seniors are more likely to vote than younger folks). Anyway, supporting Medicare is how the Republican won the House. Then they go vote for a budget plan that would shred Medicare and then nominate the plan’s author to be Vice President? Damn, this is no way to run a railroad.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44802.html
I’m an old school Ryan hater (hell, up until 10 minutes ago I was going to vote for Romney). A good a chance as any to go back to the well– quoting from a prior comment of mine…
–
Speaking as a Republican, I’ll be the first to say that Paul Ryan really is some of the worst humanity has to offer. There isn’t a more loathsome public figure in America (excepting, perhaps, that guy who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard). Why everyone in Washington is gay for the man is a mystery to me.
His plan is a cartoonishly dishonest bait and switch. Its a deficit reduction plan that doesn’t actually cut the deficit. What it does do is cut income security spending for the poor simply as a means to provide political cover for cutting income taxes for the wealthy.
If Ryan just wanted to cut taxes, I wouldn’t really care and I wouldn’t blame him, re-election campaigns don’t fund themselves. But to take the completely unnecessary additional step of what George W. Bush (to his credit) criticized as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor” is just plain rotten.
–
If the choice is between the Ryan budget and Bowles-Simpson, sounds like a win-win for the .01%
Let the fight begin you criminal elite.
You want to throw us over the cliff we are going to take you all along with us.
Not necessarily.
Do the Dems believe they can promise to protect Medicare and Social Security – really protect them as in not cut them, no raise in retirement age, no changes in COI, and definitely no vouchers….and still make their corporate benefactors believe they are going to take the knives to them after election, so they can campaign that way? Or are they brave enough to tell the MOTU they have been courting the last two decades to pound sand and secure those votes?
They were handed this present before and almost immediately started handing it back to the Pubs.
Paul Ryan
Put through school and college on social security survivor benefits.
Paul Ryan
No real life private sector job just a lifer in Congress
Paul Ryan
Promises to cut your social security and end medicare while cutting taxes on the rich
Paul Ryan
Wants you to pay off the 16 trillion dollar debt that was run up to benefit the 1%
Paul Ryan
Says you don’t need a decent wage or medical care while he drinks his $350 dollar bottle of wine and struts around his country club
That sound you hear is Obama’s team cheering the biggest gaffe from Bishop Mitt to date.
They will lie and lie and lie about what Romney and Ryan want to do to the middle class and poor of this country.
That’s why we need to kick them in the face with the truth.
Both parties.
We will not pay off the 16 trillion dollar debt. It the rich who benefited from it and they will pay it off.
Raise their taxes now or face the hordes.
This pick tells us TPTB are making their big move to cut the safety net in America.
Let’s see how they play this. We are going to know very soon whether just the Republican party needs to be eliminated or the Democratic one has to be also.
Didn’t we have a diary or two around here, back when Obama was “pivoting” to focus on the deficit, that reported Obama’s admiration for Ryan’s budget?
I’d really, REALLY like that link!
Sorry, I’m laughing too hard to reply.
Your main point is why I think the gloating over the folly of picking Ryan is premature. “Protecting” Medicare from the PPACA “cuts” working as an issue for the Republicans proved, frankly, that the American electorate is too stupid to follow and understand the program and how basic policy decisions affect it. Anyone who has seen this President in action explaining policy and attended to the 2010 general election AND thinks the race is now a slam dunk is seriously deluded.
Choosing Ryan is a good ploy by the 1%. Or 0.01%. It moves the Overton window further to the right.
Counterevidence: Bush senior won with Dan Quayle.
I think the goal at this point is to achieve a general refusal-to-believe among the population at large. See, e.g. Elizabeth Janeway’s “Powers Of The Weak”:
http://www.amazon.com/Powers-Weak-Elizabeth-Janeway/dp/0688007473
The most effective power of the weak is to refuse to believe the crap being spooned at them by those who would dominate them.
We will probably want to “take them down” when they have turned the whole of the US into a prison camp.
No, there demonstrably isn’t.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10692-obamas-second-term-agenda-cutting-social-security-medicare-and-or-medicaid
Won over that horrid “photo-op” of Mike Dukakis in a tank. I can’t wait for the pic or vid that will sink R & R so handily.
there is a big difference, they will both try to redistribute middle class assets like social security and infrastructure given away in the guise of “tax breaks”, the democrats will allow the zero to pass that legislation, they will fight a little harder when the corporatist in office ran as a republican
so the difference is, more damage under obama then mitt
ah, the old obama speechifying…then do what he planned from the beginning, redistribute the assets of our social safety net so the wealthy get it
I want to fight the guy that is not making believe he is on my team waiting to get me in the back
you?
Both of the “guys” are my opponents. They will carry out some sort of pretend “battle” for awhile, and then agree to carve me up and cook me for tomorrow’s lunch.
You mean like Obama made a “clear pledge” to give us a public option and no insurance mandate? Uh-huh.
http://youtu.be/sV3w7OD2pDs
while the race isn’t a slam dunk, it does seem like tpstb are doing whatever possible to undermine the mutt’s chances
” The choice between two evils is still evil. ” I’m starting to hear the winds of The Great Compromise blowing into the 2013 Congress. Winds of 80% Democratic concession and 20% Rethug cooperation. The middle class will get it with both barrels from the Oligarchies of Oppression, aka, the 1%ers who own the pols. Freezes on COLAs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cutbacks to the states. The ” living wage ” dies in committee. And no needed cuts in the DOD, the PIC, and not enough tax increases. The Wall St. criminals win and the Obama Adm. sells out. Obama 2.0 puts on Lincoln’s stove pipe hat for photo-ops and prepares to join the Board of Directors of Boeing, etc.
I agree and nothing hammers it home like the most recent excusing of the bank most too-big-to-fail.
But I’d still rather be in position to oppose the one who doesn’t do as promised vs. the one who who does exactly as promised.
Also, I’ll vote for Jill Stein rather than stay home, speaking of stupidity.
There is a difference, although it is just of degrees. Recent reports say that Obomber may want to appoint Erskine “fancy yuppie glasses” Bowles to be his SecTreas in a new term. So it will be full on elder cat food diet with the Rethugs, or cat food supplement for a time before full on cat food diet with the Dims. Either way, 99% elders are now officially screwed (and I am soon to become one).
I hate them both.
I heard MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (a supposedly pro-labor, liberal dude) agree with a panel of guests that cuts in Social Security and Medicare were called for. Schultz disagreed with a Republican guest only on the severity of the cuts, alleging that Romney wants to privatize Social Security (but big cuts in the existing programs are apparently okay as long as they are not privatized. Listen folks, (as Schultz would say), the PTB and their conservative and “liberal” lackeys all want to slash these programs, the only discussion we’re allowed to hear on the mass media is by how much.
The selection of Ryan for VP is intended by them to move the consensus toward more severe cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Don’t think for a moment that the Democrats will fight to protect these programs. Ryan’s selection is in no way a “mistake” by the Romney camp. It is a very deliberate choice by the PTB.
Not that sure. Never under estimate the profound stupidity of the American voter.
I think this is a declaration of all out war by the 1%. Screw the Olds and the rest of us. That’s the message.
Obama will make the very clear pledges, and then clearly break them if re-elected. He’s a weasel.
From the “no difference” to the “lesser of two evils”.
The major difference between the two is in the speeches, but not in the actions of our current POTUS.
Ryan may be the most chilling choice since Cheney, but that ticket won….and the nation survived.
I will refrain from listing the awful actions of Barack Obama’s Presidency as they have been enumerated enough times to note that you will just ignore them again. My thrust here is simply to note the old axiom about that definition of insanity, doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.
I will vote for Jill Stein as a continuing protest against the corporatist who will occupy the White House regardless of which one wins.
Ryan’s economic plan is worse than Obama’s: He lowers taxes for the rich, raises taxes for the middle class, destroys Medicare, has no government revenue numbers which might make sense according to Dean Baker:
Dean Baker’s analysis.
But as Cassiodorus noted, Obama does intend to cut Social Security and Medicare.
So this appears to be a brilliant move to make Obama look better, while still achieving the plutocrats’ goals of harvesting the money which we have invested in our social safety nets, and still funding the military defense industry.
For those whose only acceptable choices are felt to be R or D, this is entrapment or corralling of their votes to achieve seemingly similar outcomes.
Good point!
We’ll see how the polling goes. As Teddy mentioned, this may well force Obama to forego the Grand Ripoff, erm, Bargain.
Barack “leave no daylight” Obama will likely promise to cut benefits but cut them a bit less and only for the purposes of “strengthening” the program.
Oops! I now see that David Swanson beat me in making this point, and he made it so much better than I ever could:
Where do we buy life preservers to protect us from the “sink or swim” ideology of the uniparty that is preparing to throw us all overboard?
Can I “recommend” your comment too?
When we stop letting candidate “A” throw us overboard to protect us from candidate “B”.
“Hmm. Do I want my Social Security benefits cut with soaring rhetoric and self-deprecating humor by Obama & Biden, or with business experience and earnest seriousness by Romney & Ryan?
Decisions, decisions …”
I’m afraid that this has become our real choice now.