Smart Democrats Should Be Worried - By John Fund - The Corner - National Review Online
Are there smart democrats ? Just asking.
There are five reasons. I'll post them one at a time.
Liberal pundits are already fanning out in force to attack and discredit Paul Ryan. Michael Tomasky, who recently wrote a Newsweek cover story calling Mitt Romney a “wimp,” has now decided that Romney’s bold move is “a terrible choice” because Ryan has proven himself to be an extremist on budget issues.
No doubt there are many Democrats rubbing their hands in glee in contemplation of reviving some version of the ad that featured an actor playing Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff. But the smarter ones are worried.
First, if Ryan is an extremist and his proposals are so unpopular, how has he won election seven times in a Democratic district? His lowest share of the vote was 57 percent — in his first race. He routinely wins over two-thirds of the vote. When Obama swept the nation in 2008, he carried Ryan’s district by four points. But at the same time, Ryan won reelection with 65 percent of the vote, meaning that a fifth of Obama voters also voted for him.
Ryan has pointed out to me that no Republican has carried his district for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. “I have held hundreds of town-hall meetings in my district explaining why we have to take bold reform steps, and I’ve found treating people like adults works,” he told me. “All those ads pushing elderly woman off the cliffs don’t work anymore if you lay out the problem.”
I respectfully disagree with your points.
I think at this moment, Barack Obama really likes that Paul Ryan was chosen, that way we get to have a national referendum on Medicare and the Social Safety Net as a whole, instead of it being a referendum on him.
If Christie had been the guy, the Democrats wouldn't know wtf to do.
But Paul Ryan's budget reveals the ultimate difference between the core philosophies of both parties: Democrats say "We're stronger if we share the burden, share the pain, and share the prosperity", while Republicans say, "Every man for himself".
Cut and dry. Take it or leave it. One side says we should negotiate fixed prices for seniors and give them Medicare. The other side says we should give them a percentage of what their health care costs are and let them leave their houses and go shopping for insurance themselves.
Main Street voters are pissed: They're pissed at Wall Street for creating an economic crisis, and they're pissed at the government for enabling Wall Street, then rescuing them with our money, and now telling us we're broke as a result and so bye-bye Medicare.
With the Paul Ryan pick, everything crystallizes now into two fundamentally different visions for the future of America. Will Main St. voters decide that we should punish ourselves for what the Wall Streeters did by actually voting to gut our own health care? We'll have to see, but I highly doubt it.
You don't screw around with America's third rail like this in a general election, and the choice of Paul Ryan brings that idea front and center now.
I'd say it's game over once the Obama Super PACS start using clips from townhall meetings like this from last year-- [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCnIcvgFe1Y&feature=related]The GOP Meets the Main Street Movement - YouTube[/ame] --featuring craggy old white conservative voters yelling and booing at their Republican representatives for actually voting yes to end Medicare as we know it.
None of this would even be coming up had Pawlenty, Rubio, Christie or Portman been announced today. But no, just like McCain, Romney went and got mavericky and decided to appease the Kochs and the Cons, which is great for them and for folks like yourself who get to invent things like "smart Democrats are worried", but it's meaningless to the moderates among us out there.
For three months now Obama has been hammering away at the wishy washy Romney, and for three months people like yourself keep saying how afraid the Democrats are.
Yeah, I'm sure Obama is just shaking in his turban at the thought of that 9 point lead in the latest FOX poll.
