It's hard to describe how happy Democrats are to see Mitt Romney embrace Paul Ryan's House Republican budget plan. Much of the glee is seen behind the scenes, but the phrase "Christmas in March" keeps coming to mind.
Last week, the Republican frontrunner proudly proclaimed, "I'm very supportive of the Ryan budget plan. It's a bold and exciting effort.... I applaud it. It's an excellent piece of work and very much needed." By the end of the week, Romney was even defending the Ryan plan, in a remarkably dishonest way, against Democratic criticism.
It hardly came as a surprise, then, when White House senior adviser David Plouffe appeared on Sunday shows yesterday, arguing, "[T]his is really the Romney-Ryan plan. It will be rubber-stamped if Mitt Romney is elected president."
Oddly enough, around the same time yesterday, Paul Ryan was saying the exact same thing.
For those who can't watch clips online, Ryan told Norah O'Donnell yesterday he fully expects Romney, if elected, to enact his budget plan and follow through on Ryan's proposed reductions.
And that's exactly what Democrats wanted to hear: the more Romney is on the hook for backing Ryan's radicalism, the easier it will be for Dems and the Obama campaign to use this against the likely Republican nominee in the fall.
Indeed, at least on policy grounds, this may well become the anti-Romney criticism of 2012.
While the various themes and narratives are important -- Romney's flip-flops, his dishonesty, his out-of-touch elitism will clearly matter -- the more straightforward attacks will simply reference the Ryan plan Romney has accepted so enthusiastically.
Romney is "very supportive" of a budget plan that ends Medicare's guaranteed benefit, takes health care coverage from millions, radically redistributes wealth in the wrong direction, slashes taxes on the very wealthy, and would "take food from poor children, make it harder for low-income students to get a college degree, and squeeze funding for research, education, and infrastructure."
It doesn't even help reduce the deficit, which is another issue Romney sometimes pretends to care about.
Shaking the Etch A Sketch won't make this go away.
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The blind leading the blind. The seeing eye dog is on the roof of the car.
That is insulting!! A guide dog would never get him in to this kind of mess.
Romneys' guide dog would.
Romney is caught between a Right wing Republican base and a middle place. Republicans have been at war with the poor since Regan's welfare Cadillac, and making ketchup a vegetable. They have no real use for them, and see the poor through racial stereotypes. They don't buy the stat that the majority on welfare are white lower class single parents, some who were forced to have their babies by religious pressure. I hear the chatter of why don't they get a job and get off their lazy asses. The rise of gangs in urban areas fuels this fantasy and is the reason for all these defend your ground laws. Ryan sees the rich as the job creators and wants to lavish more and more on them. The privatizing of medicare is giving a largess to the insurance companies and because the 1st 20% of profit goes to wall street they get the largest benefit of all. Under his plan investors will want to squeeze more profit out of seniors health care, and it will happen when insurers begin to deny expensive care. This budget is a survival of the fittest at the expense of the most vulnerable. For any Republican to back this and say they are religious in the same breath is laughable and says more about their family values than any 500 commercials or sermons at the mega churches
What did Muppets do to deserve this?
So much for that message from a carpenter in Galilee, and there goes those professed "family values"! GOP= morally stunted hypocrites!
The Ryan-Romney Tax plan, as it will soon be known will not be Rubber Stamped (old tech). It will instead be "Erase-A-Sketched" many times over, and will then reappear as if preprogrammed by shaking it. It would be the same as an "Etch-A-Sketch", which at least allows something new to created, and then "Etch-A-Sketch" is copyrighted.
It would it be amazing if a plan were discernable after four years of campaigning. It would be revolutionary if the plan made sense. It would be a miracle if with all the intellectual power of the republican franchise could produce one statement that was remotely connected with changing the economy in such a way that addressed the needs of the country for jobs, and to do the necessary work for the infrastructure, and recognize for more than a sound bite of the real needs of the country. A country with 100 million computers cannot compute, only comment, and twitter and do nothing.
Consequences: Using a Post-Consumer Economic model is the predictable result of a Hedge Fund Economy.
This happened because of the continuing disaster of using 18th century ideas to solve problems that don’t exist. Wasting vast resources to remake the country with 18th ideas of infinite resource (more over the next hill) compounded with the insane consumption of energy resources to make armaments and then to make even more energy wasting consumptions. Those actual and historic developments impair thinking three times over, exceptional, triple insanity (there is always more, militarize and take it and waste vast resources, sounds like the Roman Empire?)
A Post-Consumer Economy is where consumers cannot earn enough to be consumer’s period, hence Post-Customers make bad customers. The model continues on with Post-Product creation (no jobs again). The final result is single Super Pac Hedge Fund contains all the money outside the money fortress guarded by the defense department and secure enough to keep the starving masses from voting.
What's really valuable about this is its use with the "progressive" purists who still manage to convince themselves there's "not a dime's worth of difference" between Obama and Romney.
Bold and exciting plan my arse ! I suppose if you are a fascistic, vulture capitalist the Ryan Plan is full of great notions like more breaks for the rich and a push toward an ever growing under class of people to serve you your coffee and shine your shoes. If you are not in the former category the Ryan Plan is full of crap.
And if :
You are an American who works their arse off making less than $100K per year you are screwed by the Ryan Plan.
You are an American who has paid into Social Security and Medicare all your life and are now retiring and expecting to get your financial contributions to America back in the form of services you are screwed by the Ryan Plan.
You are an American who has been a working poor person all your life you are screwed by the Ryan Plan.
You are an America who has been defrauded of your life savings by mortgage, stock market, military and banking crimes you are screwed by the Ryan Plan.
If you are a heartless, spineless, vicious, vulture capitalist who participates in economic terrorism against your fellow citizens we can all understand why the Ryan Plan suits you to a Tea Bag.
I just wish I had more confidence in the Democrats to get this message across to independents and moderate Republicans.
If their messaging is as bad as it has been with the health care reform fiasco, we have lots to be worried about.
The most recent "business man" to be President of the United States was Herbert Hoover, who supported the austerity and debt reduction-first policies helped turn a Wall Street-caused economic downturn into a Great Depression.
The GOP, which has been opposing rational recession-fighting proposals from the Obama administration for three years want to double down under a new administration by refusing to back stimulative programs and cut support to lower and middle income people (which actually DO stimulate the economy). Their plans are even worse than Hoover's because in addition to cutting the type of spending that will help the US economy they want to cut revenue. The debt (the Bush recession debt that they love to blame on President Obama) will continue to rise under the Ryan plan. [When their own policies increase the debt will they still anguish over the burden placed on future generations?]
The fantasy reason the Republicans provide for putting more money into the pockets of the highest earners is that these are the "job creators". Here's the rub. Anyone who has become wealthy by "creating jobs" is probably bright enough to know that having more money in one's pocket is not a good reason to hire an employee. People hire people because the hired people will make money for the hiring people. Without lower and middle class people spending money, the wealthy have no reason to "create jobs."
Who is the mastermind behind all this Hate and Destruction? Is this the thanks we get for bailing them out? So, what more do they want from us? I don't think it is wise to let filthy rich politicians balance a budget. Whose your daddy, Mr. Tex Warbucks, Thurston Goldman, Willard Banks,Olive Oil Fargo? Where's their birth certificates?
Ryan's "Modest Proposal".
These are some very creepy members of what has become a very creepy political party.