I watched the announcement that Paul Ryan will be Romney’s running mate, and parts of Ryan’s stupid speech. The whole thing was weird and foolish. Romney first told us that Paul Ryan is fond of lighting candles, and then announced that Ryan would be the next president of the United States. They chose some movie score to play for Ryan’s “dramatic” entrance, probably because almost no musicians will allow this conservative freak-show to use their music. Then Ryan delivered what can only be described as a lackluster speech filled with lies. His big applause line was that they are going to “make American great again.” What? You don’t think America is great now? F-U, buddy, move to Canada.
I noticed that Romney tried to inoculate himself on the Medicare charge by alleging that Obama cut Medicare by $700 billion. That’s an old stupid lie, but it telegraphs where The Stupid is going.
Buckle your chinstraps, we are going to be engaging a frenzy of
misinformation.
Overall, I am sure that the White House is doing cartwheels this morning. But, they shouldn’t forget, Romney is going to be feeding the American people lies through a billionaire-funded firehose.
Paul Ryan is probably pretty close to the worst choice Romney could have made. But he’s a very sincere-looking liar.
Romney just made a high-stakes gamble– for all of us.
Willard has shown repeatedly that he has no core, no center, no spine.
And, the President gets what he wants: a clear CHOICE for November.
The Ryan Budget plan is now the ROMNEY/RYAN Budget plan until Election Day.
Willard chose as a running mate, Dubya’s House Point Man on Privatizing Social Security, the author of VOUCHERCARE, which they got the GOP House to vote for not once, but TWICE.
Oh yes, the high fives went up all over the Prudential Building once this was leaked last night. The last group that was stubborn to the President have been Seniors – now, they have to confront for themselves…vote for the scary Black man or vote for those who would take away their Social Security and Medicare. With this selection, these Seniors have been bitchslapped into reality.
Romney/Ryan plan? If it was me, it’d be the RYAN PLAN forever.
You ever seen two newly adopted kids try to play the inexperienced parents by coming between them? With the level of competance shown by BOTH in politcal matters, focusing on Ryan will infuriate Mittens, cause RYAN to blow up and just generally be a pain in the ass to all concerned.
Ryan has only once had to be the constant focus of attention for the nation. And when he was it was not a success. Petulant, whiny …….. person
So, will the base be sufficiently mollified by Ryan to let Romney start running back towards the center?
How? How can they with Ryan’s budget? If Ryan walks away from his own budget, he’ll get tagged as a flip-flopper, just like his running mate.
The election now becomes a referendum on the nature of the Grand Bargain likely to occur in the lame duck session. And whether there is a lame duck session at all.
It’s time to stake out some progressive positions that will move the country forward and protect the social safety net. Will the Congressional Democratic candidates wimp out again?
Time for a line-by-line reading of the Ryan Budget.
I read that Romney is already distancing himself from the Ryan budget but claiming he has his own plan for the budget. Good luck with that, Romney.
Wait – Did I miss something? The Democrats and Obama “aren’t willing to make the hard choices on Medicare,” but Obama already “cut Medicare by $700 billion”??
Gawd, they don’t even bother to make sure their lies are internally consistent, do they? They just throw out one-liners that test well, coherence be damned, trusting that people won’t remember anything from one paragraph to the next. And that media won’t call them on it.
Neither are bad bets, really. This election is going to be a referendum on many things, but one of the most important is whether facts matter at all any longer in our political discourse. If they don’t, we fully deserve the oblivion that awaits us.
Watch out for those secular atheist radical Islamists hiding under your bed, Geov! You might not have an understanding of what it once meant to be an American!
Under my bed, hell. I sleep with one every night. š
WHAT THE HELL IS MY WIFE DOING IN YOUR BED?????!!!!!!
Show us your tax returns Mitt.
an unsurprising pick really, since it’s been clear the rightwingnuts have been going “all in” since at least the formation of the Pee Party effort commenced.
That’s the beauty of this pick: once they get their asses stomped in Nov, it can reasonably and rightly be seen as a rejection of who and what they collectively are and represent.
That’s what the GOP elite hope they can salvage from the disaster of the Mitt nomination that they orchestrated. Didn’t work in 2008 and the crazies were more down with McCain than they are or are likely to be with Mitt. Realistically, the GOP elite blew their chance to replay 1964 and now are stuck with at best replaying 2008.
that’s pretty much my pov on the matter as well.
The most they can hope for now imo is that this pick isn’t instrumental in their losing the house, and/or BHO winning by such large numbers that it can be seen as a “mandate”.
We’ll see. But this does make the Zombie-eyed Granny-starver the front runner for ’16.
possibly, but if (I know, the “big” word) they get their asses stomped as I strongly suspect they will, and particularly if the fallout spreads to a loss of the house as well, as I’ve long thought would be the case regardless of this pick, I think we’ll finally see a move back towards sanity on the part of the repub party.
I’ve thought since BHO was elected that the only chance they had of unseating him is with a candidate that could restore some sanity to the party. This was made hopeless after the rise of the Tea Party types — the best explanation for repub primary participants — but a thorough and humiliating stomping this cycle could clue them in to the fact that they are gonna need to pay to play.
The guy I’ve long thought would lead that charge is Patraeus, despite the reports of a lack of any interest currently on his part. Under this scenario, Ryan would be seen as the guy who helped hand BHO his reelection.
The choice is a sort of highly leveraged credit-default swap between the Romney campaign and the party base. Romney’s whole campaign might be an impenetrable framework of lies and fraud, but if it goes bust he just bought a AAA-rated security with the base. Like a prudent manager of a global fortune, he’s covered his worst case scenario and provided an out in case of non-performance.
For all her faults, Palin performed well on the campaign trail for the GOP crazies and kept them enthusiastic. Ryan will play to those crowds about as well as Bill Miller did.
So the republicans are proudly confirmed as the Greedy One Percent.
I wish I could have faith that the election will function as it should. This blatant declaration of their intentions shows a lot of confidence in their ability to fix the results.
Please don’t let me see another Dem concede.
Ryan is a great pick for downticket races. The chance for Democrats to retake the House have suddenly improved.
I worry about the effects of all the voter suppression shenanigans too. I won’t rest easy until the votes are all in.
Because plucking a US House Rep for a running mate has worked so awesomely in the past. And Ryan has so much charisma.
The GOP elite hope this will work as well for them in two and four years as Goldwater did in 1964. IOW appease the crazies when a loss was all but inevitable from the beginning. (Personally think they would have been better off nominating a crazy for POTUS, but alas only the batshit crazies and odious threw their hats in the ring.
I don’t know. All my gay friends say given a choice between Romney, Obama and Ryan in bar – at midnight – knowing nothing about the person … they go home with Ryan.
I’d like to share two reactions to the announcement.
My Union Steward: “What! Another effing (edited) Union buster from Wisconsin!”
A co-worker: “Does he expect anyone in Illinois to vote for anyone named Ryan? And a Cheesehead to boot?” My apologies, Wisconsinites for the epithet. Just quoted because it is a typical Illinois attitude, I’m sure you have similar “terms of endearment”.
My own reaction was that his hair looks like Rod Blagojevich’s hair. No matter how much he tosses his head, it doesn’t move a millimeter.
Not to mention that Illinois was pretty rough with the Mormons back in the day.