“Where’s The Data?”: Paul Ryan Claims 30 Percent Of America Happy To Freeload
One of the more enduring ‘knocks’ on the candidacy of Mitt Romney is that he incorrectly views many of those who are in need of government provided assistance as being people who prefer to live life at the expense of the taxpayer rather than pursue a more meaningful existence of hard work and self-sufficiency.
Whether this perspective on Romney is fair or unfair, most would agree that the GOP standard bearer’s now infamous 47% speech—delivered at a Boca Raton fundraiser—has done little to dispel this meme as we head in to the dwindling days of the 2012 presidential campaign.
Now, Romney’s running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, has weighed in with his own assessment of what drives a significant portion of the American public—and it’s not pretty.
Speaking at the annual American Spectator Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner in November of 2011, Ryan had this to say-
“Today, 70 percent of Americans get more benefits from the federal government in dollar value than they pay back in taxes. So you could argue that we’re already past that [moral] tipping point. The good news is survey after survey, poll after poll, still shows that we are a center-right 70-30 country. Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want their welfare state. What that tells us is at least half of those people who are currently in that category are there not of their wish or their will.”
While it is certainly interesting that Ryan predicates his remarks on the belief that one who does not self-identify as “right of center” necessarily opposes the the American dream, leaving it to follow that such an individual would prefer to allow the government to pay for his or her existence (quite a stretch by any reasonable standard), what most interested me about Ryan’s address was the source for his assumptions.
Who says that America is a center-right nation by a 70-30 margin? And if that is the basis of Ryan’s calculations in determining how many of us prefer the welfare state to hard work, wouldn’t a source for such a claim be appropriate?
As I simply could not recall there being any such ‘survey after survey’ and ‘poll after poll’ that would support Congressman Ryan’s conclusions, it struck me as a worthwhile venture to go looking for the same.
Bearing in mind that the Ryan address was given November of 2011—and wanting to be fair to Congressman Ryan—I went off in search of any poll conducted within a reasonable window of the time frame of Ryan’s address that might support his allegations.
I found that virtually every single one of the major polls conducted in the nation during the months leading up to Ryan’s speech revealed that the overwhelming majority of Americans (64.5 percent when the polls are averaged) believed we should be raising taxes to help cut into the deficit—an odd conclusion in a nation so heavily slanted to the right of center as claimed by Mr. Ryan.
I found that the Gallup Poll conducted on September 20th of 2011 revealed that 70% of Americans wanted to increase taxes on corporations by eliminating certain tax deductions the public believed to be unfair. The same poll also discovered that Americans widely supported the jobs plan that President Obama sent to Congress where it failed thanks to Congressman Ryan and his cohorts.
Again, a shocking result if we are to believe Ryan’s assessment that seven out of ten Americans are committed to the very ideology that Ryan professes to be his own.
I found a CBS/New York Times poll conducted just a few months before Ryan’s speech reporting that 72 percent of those polled disapproved of the way his party handled the default crisis.
And in a Time Magazine poll conducted less than one month before Ryan’s labeling 30 percent of our fellow Americans to be a bunch of bums, 79 percent of the public believed that the gap between the rich and the poor had grown too large, 86 percent believed that Wall Street and its lobbyists have far too much to say about what happens in Washington and a majority of Americans supported the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Do you know what I could not find?
Not so much as one survey or poll suggesting that the United States is a right-of–center electorate by a margin of 70-30 or that 30 percent of the public is content to live their lives courtesy of the United States government with no interest or desire in taking control of their own support and sustenance if given the chance.
While it might not be forgivable, it would at least be understandable had Ryan made this speech in the heat of a campaign where he has proven himself willing to say or do just about anything to solidify his base. However, these comments were made well before Congressman Ryan was chosen for the GOP ticket. Thus, it seems reasonable to accept that this is either what Mr. Ryan believes or what he thinks he can sell—despite an apparent lack of any evidence whatsoever to support so shrill and offensive a claim.
Congressman Ryan owes us some authority for his remarks. If these polls and surveys exist, his campaign should make them available to us.
Otherwise, Paul Ryan—a man whose own living has long come solely at the expense of the American taxpayer—is simply making this stuff up out of whole cloth and, in the process, deeply offending the millions of Americans who want more than anything to find work and get ahead but are struggling to do so.
Talk about being out of touch….
By: Rick Ungar, Contributor, Forbes, October 3, 2012
“No Greater Sin In Politics”: Mitt Romney’s Biggest Problem Is He Disrespects Most Americans
The reason that Mitt Romney’s condescending comments about the “47 percent” have done such damage to his candidacy is simple. As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos said in Tuesday’s Washington Post: “The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding they don’t like you is when voters decide you don’t like them.”
In politics there is no bigger sin than disrespecting voters. It is a sin that is rarely, if ever, forgiven. You can explain your policies and programs. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how effective you are as a “manager.” It won’t matter.
People don’t want leaders who treat them with disrespect — who believe they are unable to “convince” them to take responsibility for their lives.
Respect is such a core element of voter decision-making because it addresses one of our primary self-interests as human beings. More than most anything else, people want to feel that they have meaning — that their lives make a difference. Meaning in life is our core motivator, and once you tell people that they are, in effect, meaningless pond scum, they are not so inclined to choose you as their leader.
Being disrespected is toxic in just about any human interaction. Nothing engenders more hurt or rage than the feeling that someone thinks you don’t matter. Ask the wife who feels that she is being treated like a piece of furniture by her husband. Ask the employee who can’t stand the high-handed attitude of his boss. Ask any high school kid what he or she fears the most — the disrespect of their classmates.
Great leaders inspire people. That’s just the opposite of communicating disrespect. Inspiration is not something you think, it’s something you feel. When you’re inspired, you feel empowered. You feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself and you can personally play a significant role in attaining that greater goal. When a leader inspires you, he or she does not make you feel that he is important. He makes you feel that you are important — that you matter. Disrespect communicates exactly the opposite.
In the 47 percent video, Mitt Romney did not imply that he disrespected half of the country. He said it directly. He said he didn’t care about “those people” because he could not convince them to take responsibility for their lives. What an arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful thing to say about half of the population.
And it was plain to see that this was not a gaffe. Romney wasn’t awkwardly searching for words. What you saw was the real Romney — the one that his campaign tries to hide — speaking to the home-boys and home-girls from the board rooms and the country club.
The tape by itself would have been bad enough. But its power was magnified because it was one in a long line of Romney comments that showed disrespect for everyday Americans. They have ranged from his contemptuous put-down of the cookies a local person had served him at a drop-by at their back yard, to his patronizing, “I love to fire people,” to his constant reference to “those people.”
And his disrespectful comments extended to his “blooper reel” foreign trip last summer, where he managed to disrespect the people of London and their competency to run the Olympics and the culture of every Palestinian.
Then again, it should not be surprising that disrespect should characterize the Romney foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with a neocon foreign policy team from the Bush years that specialized in showing disrespect for pretty much everyone else in the world. That worked out well.
The 47 percent tape simply served to confirm what most people were already feeling about Mitt Romney — and that’s why it is something that Mitt Romney will find it very hard to escape.
He will try hard in the debates to be respectful and empathetic to the voters. It won’t work, it’s not who he is.
When the Washington Post asked them last month the person they would rather have as the captain of a ship in a storm, the voters were about evenly divided between Obama and Romney. Now they choose Obama 52 percent to 40 percent.
That’s partially because the conventions gave voters a chance to think about where each candidate would lead the country, and which one they believe has the vision and skill to effectively solve the country’s problems.
But it’s also because many voters have become convinced that if Romney were the captain, he might have so little respect for them that he would throw them overboard.
Disrespect correlates very highly with another key parameter that affects voter behavior — the perception of whether a candidate is “on your side.” Of course, it is entirely possible for someone not to be “on your side” and respect you all the same. That happens all the time in sports (or as Romney would say, “sport”). Two teams have conflicting goals and do battle to win, but show the deepest respect for each other’s skill. The same thing happens over negotiating tables in business everyday.
But nothing fires up the members of a football team more than the belief that the other side doesn’t respect them.
And nothing makes for a more inspiring story than when everyday people stand up to those who have disrespected them and refuse to be defeated. That’s exactly what is going to happen November 6th.
Bottom line: you can be a rich guy and win Ohio. But you can’t be a rich guy who disrespects the voters and win Ohio.
BY: Robert Creamer, The Blog, The Huffington Post, October 2, 2012
“Take All The Time You Need”: President Obama Should Simply Ask Mitt Romney To “Go Through All The Math”
Paul Ryan revealed every bit as much about the agenda of a Romney-Ryan ticket in his Sunday interview with Fox News as Mitt Romney did in his speech to that now-infamous fundraising event in Boca Raton.
Ryan acknowledged during a very long and very painful interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace that nothing matters to a Republican ticket populated by sons of privilege than lowering taxes for sons of privilege.
WALLACE: [What’s] more important to Romney? Would he scale back on the 20 percent tax cut for the wealthy? Would he scale back and say, OK, you know, we’re going to have to raise taxes for the middle class? I guess the question is what’s most important to him in his tax reform plan?
RYAN: Keeping tax rates down. By lowering tax rates, people keep more of the next dollar that they earn. That matters. That is incentives. That’s pro-growth policy. That creates 7 million jobs. And what should go first…
WALLACE: So that’s more important than…
RYAN: That’s more important than anything.
Cutting taxes for the rich is “more important than anything.”
More important than creating jobs.
More important than renewing manufacturing.
More important than maintaining Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
More important that reducing deficits.
More important than addressing debts.
“More important than anything.”
That’s a striking statement of anti-tax absolutism that goes far beyond any agenda Ronald Reagan or most of the great conservative leaders of the past would have dared to advance. And it defines the Republican ticket every bit as thoroughly as did Mitt Romney’s remarks at the fundraising event in Boca Raton.
Romney said to the wealthy donors who had gathered to provide the money needed to elect a Romney-Ryan ticket:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it—that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.… These are people who pay no income tax.… my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
So Romney does not “worry about those people.”
But that is just part of the equation. It prompts another question:
Who would a Romney-Ryan administration worry about?
Ryan has provided the answer: the recipients of the Bush-Cheney tax cuts, who for a decade now have enjoyed the benefits of a redistribution of the wealth upward so sweeping that it has opened a yawning gap between rich and poor.
That’s a political position that Ryan has every right to take. And there is no reason to doubt that he is sincere—as sincere as Mitt Romney was when he said it was not his job to worry about the 47 percent of the American population that has been on the losing end of that redistribution of the wealth upward.
But it is, as well, a position that President Obama and Vice President Biden have every right—and, arguably, every responsibility—to discuss.
When he was being interviewed by Wallace, Paul Ryan was asked to explain the details of his economic agenda. He replied, “It would take me too long to go through all of the math.”
That caused a bit of an outcry.
Ryan responded by telling Milwaukee radio talk show host Charlie Sykes: “I like Chris; I didn’t want to get into all of the math on this because everyone would start changing the channel.”
Ryan argued that “when you’re offering very specific, bold solutions, confusion can be your enemy’s best weapon.”
On Wednesday night, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will take the stage for the first debate between the major-party presidential nominees.
The debate could go anywhere.
The candidates have a good deal of freedom to provide direction.
Perhaps President Obama should simply open up with a simple restatement of what Romney and Ryan have said about dismissing the most vulnerable half of Americans while pouring their energies into maintaining tax breaks for a very wealthy and very politically connected few. Then, on the assumption that an hour and a half might be enough time to “go through all the math,” the president might invite Mitt Romney to take all the time he needs to explain an economic agenda that certainly sounds like a plan to “take” from the 99 percent and “give” to the 1 percent.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, October 2, 2012
“Zing” Went The Strings Of His Heart: Mitt Romney Learning The Lessons Of Prior Debates Too Well
The other day, The New York Times reported that in their debate preparations, “Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August.” This then became the subject of predictable ridicule (check out #romneyzingers or #mittzingers on Twitter), but it actually does give us a window into the unfortunate state of the Romney campaign.
I’m sure they’re feeling pretty tense up in Boston right now. Barack Obama has a small but stubborn lead in every poll, there’s only a month left, and these debates are the best chance the campaign has at doing something dramatic. So if you were involved in Romney’s debate prep, you probably wouldn’t think that just showing your candidate to be smart and likeable will be enough to change the campaign’s direction. Hence the pressure for zingers.
But it’s tempting to learn the lessons of past debates a little too well, and that may be what is happening to the Romney campaign right now. Yes, debates are to a significant degree about “creating moments,” insofar as “moments” are what reporters are looking for. It’s true that reporters’ interpretation of the debate ends up mattering as much or more than the debate itself, since most voters won’t see it and those who do will largely forget the parts they aren’t being reminded of over and over. But if you come out and announce that you’re preparing zingers, then you’ve given the game away, and changed how any zingers Romney does manage to zing are going to be interpreted.
This is one of those things that depends on a mutual agreement between the campaigns and the press. Almost every great line from past debates was planned, but if the zinger is zingy enough, reporters will decide not to spend too much time exploring its provenance and focus instead on what effect it might have on the race. But once you’ve told reporters that you’re preparing some zingers, the only possible response from the observers once the time comes is, “Oh, here’s one of those zingers they prepared.” It will be presented to readers and viewers of post-debate analysis not as “a clever line showing Mitt Romney’s dextrous mind and raising real questions about President Obama,” but “a line Mitt Romney practiced with his campaign advisors, and then delivered on cue.” The Romney campaign has made it impossible for reporters to suspend their disbelief.
Is it possible that the Romney brain trust has crafted a line so brilliant, so biting, so devastating that Obama’s re-election bid will crumble at its utterance? I guess it’s possible, but it’s hard to imagine that the Romney people genuinely believe they’ve come up with such a thing. But at this point, what else have they got?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 2, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 