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House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) came up short in his bid for national office, but won re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin. It wasn't an especially competitive race, though Ryan's margin of victory -- 12 percentage points -- was the closest of his seven congressional bids.
Yesterday, in his first public interview since Election Day -- and his first broadcast interview with anyone in nearly a month -- Ryan sat down with a local station in his district, sharing his take on what went wrong.
"I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race," said Ryan to local station WISC-TV in his first post-election interview.... Ryan, though, said that the election was not a referendum on his budget proposals and ideas on reforming entitlement programs.
"I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare -- we clearly didn't lose it on those issues," he said.
There are a couple of interesting angles to keep in mind. The first is that Ryan isn't really in a position to blame turnout in "urban areas" for the Republicans' national defeat. For one thing, Romney/Ryan lost in swing states like New Hampshire, which have no "urban areas." For another, there really wasn't anything especially surprising about minority turnout, so long as the campaign had a rudimentary understanding of demographics, polls, and recent history.
The second is that Ryan is going to have a tough time selling the idea that issues were irrelevant on Election Day. Indeed, the congressman is running into a falsifiability problem: if his ticket had won, it'd be proof that he's right on the issues, and even after defeat, it's still proof he's right on the issues.
And even putting that aside, NBC's Mark Murray explains today, "For all the talk about how Mitt Romney and the Republicans lost when it came to demographics, the turnout, and the tactics, the exit polls also show that they lost when it came to the issues."
[A]ccording to the exit polls from last week's presidential election, a combined 60% said that tax rates should increase either for everyone or for those making more than $250,000. Just 35% said the tax rates shouldn't increase for anyone.
What's more, 59% said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
And by a 49%-to-46% margin, voters said that their states should legally recognize same-sex marriage.
Even on comprehensive immigration reform -- a subject that some Republicans (like George W. Bush) once supported, but most no longer do -- 65% said most illegal immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.
It may make Ryan feel better to believe the issues -- and his party's positions of those issues -- were irrelevant to Democratic successes, but if 2012 taught the right anything, it should be that dubious claims that do little but make conservatives feel better aren't exactly reliable.
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So he continues lying to himself, lying to the nation. What else is new?
Paul Ryan: standard delusional wingnut. The boy is still 18 in his head, knowing he's smarter than all those people who chase him home from school every day, because Ayn Rand tells him so.
Even if we tell him that he is deluded, he will not face the facts! It's the GOP way.
It is rather precious (or maybe sad) that a week after the "facts" have been laid down, he is still oblivious to the real reasons he is not VP.
The facts are what they are. That people like Paul Ryan live in an alternative universe reality is simply laughable.
GOP BUBBLE:
Our Undefeated Streak Continues !
One could translate Ryan's comments into CoachSpeak, and they would be:
"We had a better game plan going in, better talent, and better coaching. We executed the plan and played better than the other team. All the smart, good fans were on our side. So it doesn't matter that we got our asses handed to us on the scoreboard."
Yes, Paul, it does matter.
This is the supposed "intellectual" of the Republican party? Ouch.
This fool will never get it.
He gets it just fine. He's just lying and refusing to take responsibility, which has been the standard Republican game plan for a couple decades now.
He should take the psychopath challenge here, not that it will bring about any change in his attitudes I'm sure.
http://wisdomofpsychopaths.com/
The real issue is that Paul Ryan is irrelevant. He just cannot see the reality that ticking off so many voters has consequences. He calls himself a numbers person, but it looks like he flunks arithmetic and higher math is way out of his league!
Didn't Obama carry Ryan's district although Ryan got re-elected?
Ryan and Romney lost their states.....Santorum got out the primaries because he did not want the embarassment of losing his. These two liars, without a moral core, believed their lies and did not care. The electorate told them and showed them that facts matter......they still reject this simple fact. I say to the CONS, please continue this lunacy and you, like you base will become more irrelevant than you are right now!
Is he serious? Does his family and friends just blow smoke up his a$$ instead of telling him the truth. You LOST the popular and electoral vote - do you not understand that people were telling you they do not want your budget and they did not want Medicare turned into a voucher system. Does he not understand what LOST means?
No, no, no. This is from the same guy who told the Pentagon they needed 5 billion more dollars when in fact they really said they didn't need any where near that much.
Don't you know? HE KNOWS WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU EVEN IF YOU DON'T! Let him "help" us already! /snark
In actuality, I believe most exit polls should a slight slant toward Romney/Ryan on budget/debt/economy issues. Look them up. They won the senior vote so I dont think they got beat up on medicare either. You can cherry pick isolated topics like abortion and tax cuts for the wealthy, but that doesn't mean they lost on the "issues." Lets face it. The country is quite divided. Was 2 weeks ago. Still is now. Hopefully common ground can be reached or we are all in trouble. The rhetoric thrown around on blogs like this is cowardly and only serves to further divide our country.
Unfortunately, the GOP refuses to see that the majority of voters did not agree with their agenda and ideas and this is why they lost the election. If the GOP truely wants to play an influence in the future they need to listen to what the voters want and not push ideas that are not being accepted by voters. But that will take introspection and that is a painful process. By the statements they are making they are not ready for this introspection and are focused on a reality that justifies them but does not fit to the real reality. Time will tell if the truth finally sinks in.
That comment does not represent someone trying to find common ground, but rather insulting those that hold a different position than you. Anything I post on these blogs I have no problem saying directly to our elected officials. I do in fact send e-mails to Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, Ryan, Ried, Fox News, Jon Husted, Walker, Scott, Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Jenky, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Fox News, Romney Campaign, and President Obama just to name a few. I find it offensive that it is your right to voice your opinion, however, if we disagree or have a different point of view we are cowards.
It's a particularly stupid talking point. They lost from the turnout and not the issues? What a load of crap. The issues were the entire cause of the turnout. Black and brown people, and women, flocked to the polls because they were (very wisely) voting for their interests.
Did Wisconsin legalize pot?
I don't know if Wisconsin legalized it, but our great state of Washington did. Now prosecutors are throwing out all tickets for possession of a small amount of cannabis. They maintain that the voters have spoken and that they will not criminalize recreactional marijuana if in small amounts. The laws takes effect on December 4. Thank you Washington voters. We are a progressive state.
I was hoping WA would not be that close for marriage equality 74, though. But hope that is the end of that. The pot thing is just smart. Spending money enforcing pot offenses is dumb. Let the real crimes get attention/court/jail.
Also, prohibition assumes that would stop people from drinking alcohol or using pot. It doesn't. Only deters those who would probably not use it and making drug use a crime is dumb. Look at the rise of crime around alcohol prohibition. It didn't stop people from drinking, just made them break the law and yes, bigger crimes committed trying to traffic alcohol.
The pot initiatives have nothing to do with my post. It is sarcastic humor.
I got it, but it sort of evolved.
Paul Lyin'. Still.
You missed the dog whistle.
He's telling the faithful, equally as shocked as he, that it was the black people (in urban areas) who undid the Republican dream.
And from that I expect the faithful infer there's more work to be done on "voter fraud" to make sure that next time those "urban areas" don't mess things up.
How close do you think we are on the "n-word" bomb timer?
I'll give it another five-to-ten interviews before we hear some Republican strategist say "Obama was re-elected because of all those n-words voting for him."
Yes, the 'urban' line was a clear dog-whistle. As was the not-subtle insinuation that 'urban' turnout is itself a problem.
In a way, though, Ryan is correct: population centers do tend to vote Democratic, much more so than rural areas, and it's in the cities where most of the people are. Right-wingers will just never accept the concept of majority rule. That's why John C. Calhoun came up with the idea of 'concurrent majorities': a fancy way of saying that any political outcome that the far-right minority doesn't consent to is illegitimate.
Loosing by turnout is exactly the same as loosing by the issues. Why else do people turn out to vote?! Delusional he is. And I hate how all this chatter about, "Obama didn't win by that much," stuff is going around. Under the rules of democracy, a majority (no matter how large/small) wins! I guarantee you this is the next big lie they begin. Parsing up what a 'majority' actually is and tarnishing that.
"...some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,"
"Urban areas." Are you fcking serious, Ryan? Obama won because all the blahs voted for him?
Ryan can't descend into irelevancy fast enough.
Ryan's right - here in Iowa, both of the blacks showed up to vote, and look what happened; Obama won Iowa.
/snark off/
He won Iowa....Iowa Ryan.. Just keep your hands over your ears and rose sunglasses on. Looks can only take stupidity so far with such underhanded ambition. "I just can't be wrong...I'm smart..not like everybody says...I'm smart."-Ryan. What else has he got? Poor guy.
Repuke SOP...
Heads they win, tails democrats lose!
Here's the thing: We can continue talking about how delusional Ryan and his part of the Republican Party are--and it's true, of course--but we also need to understand the potential consequences of a breakup of the GOP. Consider this scenario: The Republican Party splits into a reasonable, traditional GOP that existed up until Reagan and then an ultra-right American Taliban. We might think that, in such a case, the old GOP and the new American Taliban would split votes, but just as likely--maybe even more likely--the Democratic Party and the old GOP split votes and the American Taliban, made up of much of the current GOP base, gets elected, maybe even into the White House. This possible outcome, by the way, is one good reason for President Obama's willingness to compromise (to an extent) with Congressional and Senate Republicans. (Hitting the right balance between holding to our standards and compromising is going to be really crucial over the next 4 years.) It may be that the GOP has to finally put forward one of the American Taliban as its presidential candidate and lose really badly before the party as a whole can actually moderate itself. But all along for the next 4 years, Democrats have to come across--and actually BE--the reasonable, caring political party. What we don't want is the unthinkable, a Marco Rubio or a Paul Ryan, elected President.
Fair enough point. I'm sure Rick Santorum has a hundred more sweater vests ready for another run.
I hear the sweater vests are nearly twice as powerful as the Magic Underwear.
What Santorum doesn't realize is the math: zero times two is still zero.
Faulty logic.
If the GOP did split into a Tealiban wing and a Sane Republican wing, why would that affect any Democratic voters? For a Tealiban (R) to get elected would require that person to get a majority of the Tealiban votes, a majority of the Sane votes and peel off some Democrat votes. What Tealiban candidate could manage that?
Then again, we would have to consider the size of the two parties. Would it be an even split? Or, more likely, would the Tealiban snag the larger portion? If the latter, what percentage?
Finally, if such a split did happen, I seriously doubt very many Sane Republicans would ever consider voting for someone who represented that portion of the GOP which, most likely in their opinion, destroyed the GOP as a national party.
The possibility of Democrats and Republicans voting for candidates of each other's party would exist, but it would require an incredibly incompetent candidate running an incredibly incompetent campai...wait a moment...
//that last was snark//
Too many brown people, too many wimmins, too many poor lazy people, too many ignorant people, too many maggots. Anything, ANYTHING but their policies, right?
Dear Paul Ryan: I voted against you, your budget, your extreme stand on abortion, your desire to slash and burn everything but tax cuts for those who don't need them, your desire to build up our military so people won't be tempted to even look at us sideways. I voted against your desire to deregulate everything under the sun, I voted against your lack of policy to address health care. YOUR POLICIES. I VOTED AGAINST YOUR POLICIES.
I wish I could vote you up a thousand points.
Vote you up 2,000 if we could. :-)
On top of Ryan's ignorance . . . while he retained his Congressional seat he actually lost the vote count to his Democratic opponent in his home city of Janesville. Perhaps this is Paul "I'm for term limits in general but not for me" Ryan's last term in Congress?!
No, didn't miss the 'urban' dog whistle.
Also didn't miss the fact that the Republicans, almost to a person, are all about 'it was how the message was delivered not the message itself' in their attempts to understand why they lost.
So long as the Republicans continue to ignore the fact that it was their ideas, and not how they were delivered, that caused them problems, they'll continue to have those same problems.
Good. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of crazies.
"I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare -- we clearly didn't lose it on those issues," he said.
And he has the FoxNews polling data to back him up.
Specific micro issues aside, I think many wre offended that Romney would not release his tax returns and that the GOP has played Obama dirty for 4 years. Then we get to the weight of specific issues and their deal sinks.
So, Ryan rejects the "market's" reaction? The customers were wrong?
Don't let Ryan fool ya. He's a Washington insider. But his constituents seem OK with that, for 7 terms, is it?
I did my own study regarding this urban voters wanting stuff.
I just thought of 3 states in the north east part of the country. There's not exactly a stereotypical urban connotation that pops into caucasian minds from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Here, I found it. The day after the election: #29.10
Maybe the GOP just thinks they need a better ORCA?
Why is Paul Lyin' Ryan so surprised by the turnout in urban areas (i.e., BLACK FOLKS)? Republicans were determined to hold down Black voting in this election, especially in Ohio and Florida, and THEY FAILED. Ryan should understand that when you try to stop people from exercising their rights, they become even MORE ENERGIZED.
He's upset for the same reason most of his party is upset . . . they thought those votes had been sufficiently suppressed.
They thought they had done what was necessary. Suppression tactics and throw tons of money on ads. Those things blew up in their faces, big time.
I am GLAD the money is viewed as wasted (although it could have been put to a much more humane use-but I question if they even have any humane bones which have been transformed into GREED bones-but that assumes they ever had any humaneness). At least can they see their investments were not netting dividends.
They need to acknowledge the people want to keep Medicare and SS, not the Ryan plan. THAT was also rejected. But they will pretend they just had too many brown people voting and try to change election tactics, NOT the policies.
I agree. When he blames "turnout", he means that he expected the voter suppression tactics to work a lot better than they did.