“Lipstick On A Wonk”: Paul Ryan Is As Risky A Pick For Mitt Romney As Sarah Palin Was For John McCain
It’s official: Mitt Romney has picked Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan to join him as his running mate. I’ve already written why I think Ryan is a terrible choice. In short, his plan to cut taxes on the rich and gut the welfare state is one of the most unpopular proposals in American politics. Conservatives love Ryan, but seniors, young people, women, nonwhites, veterans, the disabled, and the poor might feel differently about a man who wants to make the federal government an ATM for the wealthy.
In terms of the election, it’s hard to see how Romney gains from this choice. Because of its large population of working-class whites, Wisconsin has the potential to become a swing state, but for now, Obama has a solid lead. Yes, vice presidential nominees provide a home-state boost, but it’s small—on average, two points. Barring a major change in the race, the most Ryan will do is help Romney lose Wisconsin by a somewhat smaller margin than he would have otherwise.
With that said, a vice presidential choice is most important for what it says about the nominee, and Ryan reflects poorly on Mitt Romney. On the first and most crucial qualification—“Can this person govern the country if the president dies or leaves office”—the answer is “no one knows.” Ryan has no executive experience of any kind: no experience leading a large organization, or something just as complex like a presidential campaign. Executive experience isn’t everything, but it does stick out, especially given Romney’s short tenure in public office.
Ryan has little experience with foreign policy—even less than Romney, in fact—and has spent the majority of his adult life in the House of Representatives. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but by the standards of the Republican Party, which routinely knocks Obama for his lack of private-sector experience, it’s a major failing. Conservative Ryanmania (like Beatlemania, except with white, aging billionaires) notwithstanding, there’s no evidence that Ryan could step in and govern if President Romney were incapacitated.
Paul Ryan exudes confidence, has a tremendous amount of political skill—as Dave Weigel said on Twitter, it’s no small feat to convince Washington journalists that you are a serious budget wonk, despite the complete lack of evidence—and Ryan benefits from the presumption that powerful white men know what they’re doing. But in terms of his ability to lead, he’s no less risky than Sarah Palin. In evaluating Romney’s readiness, we should keep this choice in mind.
The Ryan choice also says a lot about Romney’s standing with conservatives. If he had their full support, he would be free to choose a more moderate running mate, like New Jersey’s Chris Christie. Hell, if he had their partial support, he could choose another conservative in sheep’s clothing, like Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. But he lacks the trust and good will of the conservative establishment. For a presidential challenger, this is dangerous: Romney can’t win the White House if he doesn’t have a unified base.
If there’s anything that would earn him the unconditional support of conservatives, it’s choosing their prophet as his running mate. It satisfies their calls to make this election about “big ideas,” and not just a referendum on President Obama. If you believe that Americans are clamoring for Medicare cuts, this is a swell plan. But since they aren’t, it’s hard to say that this is a good political choice for Romney. Indeed, there’s an even greater downside for his career—if he loses, conservatives will blame him for weighing down Ryan. He will become a pariah, banished from the halls of Republican power.
One last thing. Many people, liberals included, are convinced that Romney is playing a part. “He’s not really a conservative,” they say, “In office, he’ll move to the center.” The Ryan pick should disabuse everyone of that idea. The Right has a firm grip on the Romney campaign, which will grow tighter if he’s elected president. To borrow from David Frum, this is “about forcing a platform on Romney, and then dictating the agenda for that presidency’s first year.”
The stakes have just been raised. If Obama loses, we can look forward to President Mitt Romney, Vice President Paul Ryan, and the most right-wing presidential administration in modern American history.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 11, 2012
“A Panicky Pick From A Position Of Weakness”: The Illogic Of Romney Picking Paul Ryan For Vice President
Do you hear that noise? It’s the sound of millions of conservative hearts going pitter-patter over this week’s speculation boomlet regarding the prospect of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney tapping House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to be vice president. Maybe they’ll get their fondest wish, maybe Tampa will be flooded with Romney-Ryan signs and bumper stickers in a couple of weeks. But I think there’s a basic illogic to the notion that makes it hard to see it coming to pass.
NBC’s “First Read” and others have pointed to Romney’s comments to the network about wanting a visionary vice president as a nod in Ryan’s direction. Romney said Thursday that, “a vision for the country that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country. I mean, I happen to believe this is a defining election for America that we’re going to be voting for what kind of America we’re going to have.” Certainly Ryan has a well-established vision for where he wants to take the country—but therein lies the danger. Whose candidacy would this be anyway? If Romney decides to import the Ryan vision for America lock, stock, and barrel, he’ll run the risk of seeming to be a me-too nominee: He doesn’t have a vision for America of his own so he decided to embrace someone else’s. What then is the raison d’etre for a Romney presidency if it’s a Ryan agenda? Certainly Romney has endorsed the Ryan budget, but adopting it as his own would be taking that to a whole different level.
This potential problem would be mitigated if Romney had laid out a strong vision for the country so far, but he has run a campaign which has become famous (infamous?) for its lack of policy specifics and detail. At the same time, Romney has by apparent design remained something of a personal blank slate for the general public (except for the devastating definition Democrats gave it in July). Romney’s basic campaign message has been: I’m not-Obama (since the middle of June, more than 90 percent of the ads Romney has run have been negative, according to the Washington Post’s ad tracker). Is his campaign really going to fill in that blank slate with someone else’s detailed agenda?
There’s an argument that the three polls out yesterday giving Obama an outside-the-margin-of-error lead could also spur a game-changing pick a la Ryan. “The conventional wisdom had been that Romney was going to be picking a running mate in a coin-flip race. Well that’s not the case now. How does that change his mind? Does it help Paul Ryan?” asks “First Read,” adding that Romney has gone from picking a running mate from a position of strength to “picking one from a position of weakness.” That seems a bit strong, especially based on one set of polls. Does the Romney team want to exacerbate a perception of weakness by making what could be seen as a panicky pick (a sop to a jittery base, a Hail Mary in the face of a widening gap in the polls, and a whiplash-inducing strategic change from deliberate policy vagueness to a highly controversial off-the-shelf economic agenda).
Exit question: Given Ryan boomlet this week, how can the Romney campaign let the faithful down gently if they do indeed go with a more conventional choice?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 10, 2012
The “War on Religion”: GOP Still Placating The Hard Core Base
Is anyone who doesn’t already hate Obama for the usual right-wing reasons really going to believe the new Romney ad, that Obama’s health-care law wages a “war on religion”? I doubt many people will. It’s just right-wing fever-swamp rhetoric that I think your average person will, in his or her bones, recognize as such, because we’ve now reached the point in history where we’ve heard a lot of this, and it no longer shocks or traduces the way it once did.
Romney is still placating the hard-core GOP base. It’s getting a little late for that, isn’t? August isn’t really the time to be trying to nail down the scary-lazy-black-people and the Democrats-hate-God voting blocs. August is when you start making your pitch to swing voters.
This is starting, just starting, to remind me of the Rick Lazio 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary, when he, under the brilliant hand of Mike Murphy, made a crucial mistake conservatives are naturally prone to make. He confused “regular New Yorkers” with “right-wing Hillary haters” and thought they were functionally the same thing. Thus he couldn’t for the life of him understand why middle-of-the-road New Yorkers weren’t impressed and persuaded when he and the state GOP accused the First Lady of the United States of sympathizing with the terrorists who blew up the USS Cole. The Romney camp is edging into the same territory.
If Romney wants to talk about wars on religion, I really hope he names Paul Ryan as his veep. The Catholic Bishops called the Ryan budget “immoral.” Unfortunately, the Democrats probably wouldn’t even point this out, wouldn’t want to lean on the bishops. And this raises a problem with today’s Democratic Party.
I’d love to see the party become less skittish about using religion to defend and support its policies. Many elected Democrats, indeed most, are religious people. Obviously, their religious beliefs inform their political views, and vice versa. They ought to be more comfortable talking about it.
Why should Republicans be the only ones to invoke Jesus, and only for conservative reasons and ends? I think it would be delicious if Democrats started quoting more Scripture in behalf of liberalism. After all, a lot of Scripture is liberalism. I’m not religious myself, but I think it’s a shame that liberalism is so guardedly secular.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, August 9, 2012
“Go Ahead, Make That Statement”: Why Obama Would Love To Run Against Paul Ryan
Sorry, conservatives: Having the Wisconsonite on the ticket would make it easier for the president to portray Romney as a heartless plutocrat.
As Beltway anticipation builds for Mitt Romney’s vice presidential announcement, conservative pundits have re-upped their calls for a “bold” and adventurous choice. This morning, the Wall Street Journal editorial page took the lead with a plea to add House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan to the ticket.
The Journal acknowledges the appeal of VP frontrunners Tim Pawlenty and Rob Portman—working-class roots and high-level experience, respectively—but says that Ryan is the only politician with the gravitas and vision to campaign on a presidential level. Here’s the op-ed:
Too risky, goes the Beltway chorus. His selection would make Medicare and the House budget the issue, not the economy. The 42-year-old is too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious. Beneath it all you can hear the murmurs of the ultimate Washington insult—that Mr. Ryan is too dangerous because he thinks politics is about things that matter. That dude really believes in something, and we certainly can’t have that. […]
The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.
The Journal’s broader argument is that Romney can’t win if this election is fought over “small issues,” like Bain Capital or his taxes. The only way he can prevail, they argue, is if he turns this into a fight over big ideas. Placing Ryan on the ticket would go a long way to making that a reality—he is the architect of the Republican Party’s policy platform.
It’s hard to escape the impression that conservatives view Ryan as a consolation prize for the fact that their best chance for rolling back the welfare state resides in the former Massachusetts governor who gave Democrats the bluebrint for Obamacare. But Ryan would be a terrible choice, and if you aren’t ensconsed in the conservative movement, it’s easy to see why: Ryan’s plan—low taxes on the rich and higher defense spending, funded by sharp cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and most social programs—is wildly unpopular with the public.
Last year, the Washington Post and ABC News surveyed Americans on key elements of the Ryan plan. Would you support reforming Medicare such that beneficiaries “receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy?” Sixty-five percent of respondents said they would oppose such a plan. If told that the cost of private insurance would eventually outpace the value of the voucher—projected under Ryan’s proposal—opposition rises to 80 percent.
The same goes for new tax cuts. By two-to-one (44 percent to 22 percent), according to the Pew Research Center, Americans say that cutting taxes for the rich would harm the economy. The same percentage says that raising taxes on the rich would make the tax system more fair than it currently is.
Both realities have already caused problems for Romney. He does as much as possible to obscure his support for the Ryan plan from the public, but most Americans identify him as someone who would help the rich over ordinary people. Putting Ryan on the ticket would exacerbate that problem, and give Obama a huge boost as he begins the second phase of his attacks on Romney.
Remember, the focus on Bain Capital—and Romney’s tax returns—are a means to a end: showing Romney as a heartless plutocrat who will use the presidency to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. That image will allow Obama to pin the Ryan plan on Romney, and to (accurately) present him as the avatar for selfish reactionaries.
Without Ryan on the ticket, this is a little difficult: The Ryan/Romney plan is an astoundingly right-wing proposal for the future of the country, so much so that voters refuse to believe that any politican would endorse it, much less make it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. This was somewhat alleivated by the Tax Policy Center analysis—which shows the degree to which Romney would have to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for his upper-income tax cuts—but would be simple to accomplish if Paul Ryan himself were the vice presidential nominee.
Already, with ads like the recent one from Priorities USA, Democrats are painting a picture of America under the Ryan/Romney plan: less mobility for most Americans, less security for middle-class families, and an explosion of income inequality. A Romney/Ryan campaign would allow Democrats to turn those attacks to eleven, and hammer the extent to which Republicans intend to transform government’s role in shaping our society.
Putting Paul Ryan on the ticket is the election-year equivalent of the Republican strategy on health care reform—high stakes, high reward. If the health-care strategy had worked, categorical opposition to reform would have blocked the law and destroyed Obama’s presidency. But it didn’t, and Democrats passed a health care bill that was more compehensive—and more liberal—than it would have been with Republican support.
A Romney/Ryan ticket could conceivably win, of course, and Republicans could then claim an ideological mandate for sweeping changes to the social contract. In all likelihood, though, Ryan’s vulnerabilities would weigh down the ticket and keep Romney from winning a critical number of undecided voters. By satisfying conservative cries for “substance,” Romney would all but condemn the GOP to four more years of an Obama presidency, allowing Democrats to entrench the major changes of the last three-and-a-half years (namely the Affordable Care Act) and gain a long-term upper hand.
Yes, it’s unsatisfying for ideologues, but for this election Republicans might want to stick to the small stuff, rather than risk it on a “statement.”
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August, 9, 2012
“Doom And Gloom”: A History Of Paul Ryan’s Attempts To Dismantle Social Security
That House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) supports the privatization of Social Security is well known. Ryan proposed $1.2 trillion in cuts and the partial privatization of Social Security upon taking control of the Budget Committee in 2011, and he has constantly warned about the supposed doom facing the program if major reforms aren’t enacted immediately.
But Ryan’s attempts to gut the most popular entitlement program in America go back quite a few years, as Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker profile of the conservative hero makes clear. Ryan’s fight against Social Security has been ongoing since he pushed President George W. Bush to privatize the program in 2005:
Under Ryan’s initial version, American workers would be able to invest about half of their payroll taxes, which fund Social Security, in private accounts. As a plan to reduce government debt, it made no sense. It simply took money from one part of the budget and spent it on private accounts, at a cost of two trillion dollars in transition expenses. But, as an ideological statement about the proper relationship between individuals and the federal government, Ryan’s plan was clear. […]
Two weeks after Bush’s Inauguration, Ryan gave a speech at Cato asserting that Social Security was no longer the third rail of American politics. He toured his district with a PowerPoint presentation and invited news crews to document how Republicans could challenge Democrats on a sacrosanct policy issue and live to tell about it.
Bush ultimately went with a slightly less radical proposal that still failed in the Senate and caused Republicans massive losses in the 2006 mid-term elections. But Ryan, undeterred, told Lizza that the failure of privatization was simply due to marketing, not that the plan was unpopular:
What some might interpret as the failure of an unpopular idea Ryan insisted was mostly a communications problem. “The Administration did a bad job of selling it,” he told me. Bush had campaigned on national-security issues, only to pitch Social Security reform after reëlection. “And . . . thud,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to prepare the country for these things. You can’t just spring it on them after you win.” The lesson: “Don’t let the engineers run the marketing department.”
Aided by the mainstream media’s spreading of the lie that Social Security is “going bankrupt,” Ryan has been able to thrust Social Security “reform” back onto the table, and it was embraced during the primary by virtually every Republican candidate.
What Ryan and his Republican colleagues continue to ignore, however, is how easy fixing Social Security would be if they weren’t so insistent on protecting the wealthiest Americans from a single tax increase. By lifting the payroll tax cap that currently limits Social Security contributions to the first $110,100 in income, Congress could ensure the program’s solvency for the next 75 years — longer than the program has been in existence to this point.
That wouldn’t fit Ryan’s belief that the government doesn’t have a role in helping protect the financial security of the American people. But it would prevent millions of Americans from losing the much of their retirement savings, as they would have during the 2008 financial crisis had Ryan’s plan to privatize Social Security become law.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, July 30, 2012
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