Paul Ryan Named as VP Nominee

Paul Ryan Named as VP Nominee

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Mitt Romney has selected Rep. Paul Ryan, a seven-term Republican from Janesville, Wis., to be the GOP's vice-presidential nominee, the campaign announced early Saturday morning.

Suggested 1st question to Mr Ryan.....Will you be releasing your tax returns for the last 10 years?

Personally,I'm thrilled with the pick. Right off the top of my head I figure they've just handed us Florida due to Ryan's draconian positions on Medicare. Mittens is now officially married to Ryan's nutty tax and budget proposals.

And last but not least? Fantastic rhyming opportunities for fun campaign slogans
Romney & Ryan flip-flopping and lying
Romney & Ryan....GOP loses & 4 yrs of cryin

Total win for Dems. Via David Frum:

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The likely script of the next attack ad. A woman in her later 40s, looking worried at a kitchen table. She's probably vaguely Latino; the photos on her refrigerator (kids, no dad) suggest a single mom.

A woman's voice over. "You've worked hard all your life. You've paid Medicare taxes for almost 30 years. But under the Republican plan, Medicare won't be there for you. Instead of Medicare as it exists now, under the Republican plan you'll get a voucher that will pay as little as half your Medicare costs when you turn 65—and as little as a quarter in your 80s. And all so that millionaires and billionaires can have a huge tax cut."

That ad will draw blood and will—as Henry Kissinger used to say—have the additional merit of being true.

And Ed Brayton:

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There aren’t a whole lot of similarities between Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin. Unlike Palin, Ryan is bright and is considered a policy wonk. But there’s one clear similarity between the two: Both were picked to be on the ticket out of desperation.

Nate Silver had it exactly right when he Tweeted:

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I think Ryan pick (if rumors true) indicates bearish view from Romney campaign. Not a pick you make if you think you’re ahead.

Ben Smith of Politico likewise tweeted that this pick was “the first real surprise move in Romney’s political career.” And David Frum said that with this pick Romney had “converted what ought to be an easy win for the out party into the biggest gamble since 1964.” Why? Social Security and Medicare. Romney has played it coy on whether he supports the Ryan plan to privatize those programs, trying to prevent that plan from being hung around his neck, but he has now hung that albatross on himself. The Ryan plan is now his plan and it is wildly unpopular with middle class and older voters, both usually firm members of the Republican coalition.

. . .

Conservative bloggers and pundits will love it; independent voters and the elderly, who vote in high numbers, will not.

This didn't take long. Less than 72 hrs and already the bloom is off the rose
Poll: Paul Ryan Most Unpopular VP Choice Since Dan Quayle

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A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows that Paul Ryan is probably not going to help Romney much: Paul Ryan Gets Low Marks for VP.

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Americans don’t believe GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney hit a home run with his choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, with more of the public giving him lower marks than high ones.

Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, is seen as only a “fair” or “poor” choice by 42% of Americans vs. 39% who think he is an “excellent” or “pretty good” vice presidential choice.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said in a statement that the findings reflect the fact that Ryan, a House member since 1999, isn’t widely known.

USA TODAY/Gallup polls of registered voters after the announcements of running mates since Dick Cheney in 2000 all showed more positive reactions. Only Dan Quayle in a 1988 Harris Poll of likely voters was viewed less positively than Ryan, with 52% rating Quayle as a “fair” or “poor” vice presidential choice. The Ryan poll includes all adults, not just registered voters.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if Obama was the one who ends up getting the "bump" in the polls as a result of Mittwit's choice for VP? I saw another poll today where Obama is leading bu 44 points among Hispanics. That's another demographic the Ryan is poison for.

This Poll Is Another Terrible Sign For Paul Ryan And Mitt Romney

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Mitt Romney insisted Sunday night on "60 Minutes" that his new running mate, Paul Ryan, is qualified to serve as president if the need arose. But in a warning sign for the campaign, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden is seen as a far better choice than Ryan to serve as president if needed, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The poll found that by a whopping 44 to 29 percent margin, Biden was "more qualified" to serve as president if necessary, though a large number of voters remained uncommitted.

A USA Today/Gallup poll Monday found that 48 percent think Ryan is fit to be president. That's 9 points higher than Sarah Palin's initial 2008 numbers, but trails every other vice presidential candidate since 1988.

The Gallup/USA Today poll also found that Ryan received the worst initial reception as any vice presidential nominee since 1988, when Dan Quayle was the Republican nominee.

Historical data shows that although it's only one poll, the Romney campaign should be at least slightly concerned about the lack of a boost from its VP candidate. Shortly after John Kerry made John Edwards his running mate in 2004, Kerry received a surge in support, and Edwards led former Vice President Dick Cheney 45-38 in the presidential fitness question.

And in 1996 — when Ryan's mentor, Jack Kemp, was the vice presidential challenger to incumbent Al Gore — Kemp enjoyed a brief boost, trailing Gore by only 3 points in presidential fitness, before plunging in the polls after the vice presidential debate.

Mittens managed to pick a VP that couldn't even give him a bump in the polls. Priceless! What makes it even worse is that by choosing Ryan so early (Palin wasn't named until almost the day before the 2008 GOP convention) it eliminates all the usual drama,suspense and anticipation leading up to their circus clown car convention. This is a huge excitement killer!

Why Ryan Could Make a Romney Victory Harder

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The party increasingly depends on the types of voters who don't like Ryan's plans for Medicare and Social Security.

Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate could deepen the intrinsic tension between the Republican policy agenda and the voters it relies on to win elections.

Ryan’s ambitious budget blueprint, as passed twice by House Republicans over the past two years, crystallizes the GOP’s highest policy priority: shrinking the size of the federal government, largely by dramatically restructuring entitlement programs led by Medicare and Medicaid. But the GOP today is increasingly dependent on the votes of older and blue-collar whites who -- while eager to scale back government programs that transfer income to the poor -- are much more resistant to retrenching entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security that largely benefit the middle-class.

. . .

“By putting Ryan on the ticket, the Ryan budget is their vision for the country,” said veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, who wrote a memo last Sunday urging his party to nationalize both the presidential and congressional campaigns around Ryan’s budget. “They think the biggest problem of government is the money being spent on universal programs that older white non-college and working class voters depend on to have a middle class retirement. All that to pay for breathtaking tax cuts for the wealthiest. These are anti-elitist voters who are going to want very little to do with their vision and these two men.”

The electoral impact of Ryan’s plan is so crucial because less affluent whites have become so central to the GOP’s electoral prospects. Republicans have carried a majority of white seniors in each presidential election since 2000, with their share of the vote among them rising from 52 percent that year to 55 percent in 2004 to 58 percent in 2008; they soared to 63 percent with those voters in the 2010 House elections, according to exit polls. Over the past three presidential elections, Republicans have also amassed commanding margins among blue-collar whites, attracting around three-fifths of them each time; those voters also gave GOP House candidates 63 percent of their votes in 2010. Polls this year have found President Obama struggling with both older and blue-collar whites -- though recent Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times surveys have shown the president regaining some ground in battleground states with non-college white women, the so-called “waitress moms.”

. . .

In March, the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll offered respondents two options for the program. Just 19 percent of whites older than 65 endorsed Ryan’s approach, which said “Medicare should be changed to a system where the government provides seniors with a fixed sum of money they could use either to purchase private health insurance or to pay the cost of remaining in the current Medicare program.” Fully 74 percent of white seniors said instead that “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government providing health insurance and paying doctors and hospitals directly for the services they provide to seniors.” Among non-college whites, 63 percent said they preferred the current system, while only 26 percent backed Ryan’s approach. (Ryan’s plan also drew opposition not only from 66 percent of college-educated white women -- consistently the most Democratic-leaning component of the white electorate -- but even 60 percent of college-educated men, an audience usually receptive to anti-government arguments.)

Generally surveys find white women more resistant to changes in the safety net than white men (although the specific Congressional Connection Poll on Ryan’s plan didn’t show that pattern.) If Ryan’s plan remains a central focus through the fall, it would not be surprising if that debate widened the gender gap -- potentially helping the Republican ticket with men most receptive to the sort of broad anti-government arguments Ryan unfurled in his announcement speech Saturday, but hurting it with white women.

Caught red handed
Presented With Letters, Ryan Admits Requesting Stimulus Cash

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After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.

Ryan had denied doing so as recently as Wednesday, when he spoke to ABC’s Cincinnati affiliate, WCPO, in Ohio.

“I never asked for stimulus,” Ryan said. “I don’t recall… so I really can’t comment on it. I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work.”

Two years ago, during an interview on WBZ’s NewsRadio he was asked by a caller if he “accepted any money” into his district. Ryan said he did not.

“I’m not one [of those] people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money,” the congressman answered.

But as we’ve now learned, Ryan did write letters. He did request stimulus funds.

“The Olympics may be over but Paul Ryan could have gotten a gold medal in hypocrisy,” a senior administration official told ABC’s Jake Tapper. “As someone who spends all day every day railing against government spending, but then secretly seeks millions in funds for pet projects, he is as Washington as it gets.”

Ryan Sponsored Abortion Bill That Would Make Romney's Kids Criminals

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The Sanctity of Human Life Act, which Ryan co-sponsored, would have enshrined the notion that life begins at fertilization in federal law, thus criminalizing in vitro fertilization—the process of creating an embryo outside of a woman's womb. In IVF, doctors typically create multiple embryos and then only implant the healthiest ones in the woman. Some of them stick and become babies, and some don't. The embryos that don't make it to the womb are either frozen for later use or destroyed. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, if passed, would make all those embryos "people" in the legal sense, so if they aren't used or don't become babies after being implanted, they would essentially become murder victims under the law.

In the more than 30 years since the world's first "test-tube baby," IVF has become a fairly common procedure and a lifeline to many infertile couples, Democrat and Republican, despite some of the thorny moral issues involved in the process. Some 60,000 babies every year are born thanks to IVF. Infertility is thought to affect some 10 to 15 percent of all couples in the US—especially those upper-class professionals who delay childbearing until their late 30s and early 40s. Infertility, in fact, is such a bipartisan problem that no fewer than three of Mitt Romney's own children have relied on the procedure to produce some of his 18 grandchildren.

In May, Romney's son Tagg became father of twin boys thanks to help from IVF and a surrogate mother. Tagg's son Jonathan was also produced this way. Two of Tagg's brothers reportedly have struggled with infertility issues and resorted to IVF as well. It's hard to imagine that Romney will score any points with voters by tapping a running mate whose anti-abortion views are so extreme that Romney's own kids can't live with them.

Ryan's position on IVF might give President Obama an opening for attack: While Romney's running mate has advocated criminalizing a procedure that has brought untold joy to about 3 million families over the past three decades, Democrats might be able to claim credit for making advanced infertility treatments available to the vast majority of Americans who can't afford them. Currently, most health insurance plans don't cover infertility treatment, so IVF and other advanced baby-making technology is mostly available to rich people—like the Romney boys.

Norah O'Donnel nails Lyin Ryan on defense spending....
Ryan: I Didn’t Vote For The Defense Cuts I Voted For

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Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has gotten in hot water before for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for in 2011. When confronted with this incongruity today on Face The Nation, Ryan simply denied that he ever voted for the cuts, telling an incredulous Norah O’Donnell that he didn’t actually vote for the cuts he’s on record as voting for:

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O’DONNELL: Now you’re criticizing the President for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory.

RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government. … We can get into this nomenclature; I voted for the Budget Control Act. But the Obama Administration proposed $478 billion in defense cuts. We don’t agree with that, our budget rejected that, and then on top of that is another $500 billion in defense cuts in the sequester.


O’DONNELL: Right. A trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!

RYAN: No, Norah. I voted for the Budget Control Act.

O’DONNELL: That included defense spending!

RYAN: Norah, you’re mistaken.

I also saw a piece of him on ABC's "This Week" where once again,he was stumbling,stammering,stuttering and mumbling when George Stephanopoulos attempted to pin him down on exactly which tax loopholes for millionaires they would close.

I can't see Independents and swing voters buying the snake oil that this guy is trying to sell.
Bring On the Debates!

With all the eggs,Rombot has been laying over the past 2 weeks,we've overlooked what Eddie Munster AKA Lyin Paul Ryan has been up to. Trying not to be outdone by Mitwit he managed to lay his very own steaming pile of excrement in front of the AARP today....
Paul Ryan tanks at the AARP

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It started bad for Paul Ryan at the AARP Life @ 50+ event, and never got better.

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Paul Ryan pressing on with GOP #Medicare case amid loud boos from AARP crowd.
— @louiseradnofsky via web
This is without a doubt the most unfriendly audience Ryan has spoken to as VP candidate. Audience alterantes between silence and boos.
— @Rebecca_CBSNJ via TweetDeck
now audience members at AARP are yelling "you lie" as Ryan tells crowd Medicare is going bankrupt #decision2012
— @AlexNBCNews via web

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One of the biggest problems for Ryan with this crowd is that the AARP is really, really good about educating its members about what's going on in Washington, and what's at stake for them. The people who show up at AARP events are very well informed on Medicare, on Social Security and they know bullshit when they hear it, which is pretty much all Ryan had to offer.

That also means that this crowd knows Obamacare isn't hurting them, they've already seen how it's helping with preventive care and screening that they don't have to pay for and big savings on prescription drugs with the donut hole closed. Lying about it to them just isn't going to work, and they're not going to get on board with a plan to do away with all that.

Romney and Ryan really are in trouble now. They've lost their most reliable demographic—old people.

I'm so glad no one is buying his bullshit. He really has no one to blame but himself. His convention speech ruined what little credibility he had in the first place.

Yes, that's right... the guy that was supposed to bring back honesty to politics is attempting to resurrect Politifact's 2009 Lie of the Year:

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If a recent comment from Paul Ryan is any indication, we’ve cycled back to the ugly idea that marred much of the debate over President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential candidate, told an audience at Florida’s largest retirement development that Obama’s health care law “puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”

It’s a wonkier variation of Sarah Palin’s 2009 assault, which she’s returned to since, on Obama’s “death panels," which was in turn echoed by Michelle Bachmann’s claim last fall that “15 political appointees will make all the major health-care decisions for over 300 million Americans.” She continued: “I don’t want 15 political appointees to make a health-care decision for a beautiful, fragile 85-year-old woman who should be making her own decision.”

Heretic wrote:

Yes, that's right... the guy that was supposed to bring back honesty to politics is attempting to resurrect Politifact's 2009 Lie of the Year:

Taking campaign advice from Princess Word Salad perhaps?
Palin says Romney and Ryan should ‘go rogue’

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Former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin said this year’s GOP ticket should take after her and “go rogue,” in a statement to The Weekly Standard Saturday.

“With so much at stake in this election, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should ‘go rogue’ and not hold back from telling the American people the true state of our economy and national security,” Palin said. “They need to continue to find ways to break through the filter of the liberal media to communicate their message of reform.”

OMG! Lyin Ryan is going rogue
Paul Ryan vs. The Stench

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Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Even before the stench article appeared, there was a strong sign that Ryan was freeing himself from the grips of the Romney campaign. It began after his disastrous appearance on Friday before AARP in New Orleans. Ryan delivered his remarks in the style dictated by his Romney handlers: Stand behind the lectern, read the speech as written and don’t stray from the script.

Ryan brought his 78-year-old mother with him and introduced her to the audience, which is usually a sure crowd pleaser.

But when Ryan began talking about repealing “Obamacare” because he said it would harm seniors, one woman in the crowd shouted, “Lie!” Another shouted “Liar!” and the crowd booed Ryan lustily.

Who boos a guy in front of his 78-year-old mother? Other 78-year-old mothers.

That was Friday, and that was the end of Ryan following the game plan. At a certain point, all running mates on failing campaigns feel they must break free from the manacles placed on them by the top of the ticket. Sarah Palin began pursuing her own path once she learned that John McCain was having strategy sessions with his morning bowl of Farina.

Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)

But on Saturday, the day after he was booed, Ryan broke free. Appearing at a town hall meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Ryan showed the glitz, the glamour, the razzle-dazzle that he was supposed to bring to the campaign in the first place.

He did a PowerPoint presentation for the crowd. According to the National Journal, be began thusly: “ ‘I’m kind of a PowerPoint guy, so I hope you’ll bear with me,’ Ryan told the audience as he began clicking through four slides, which showed graphs depicting U.S. debt held by the public from 1940 to present, debt per person in the United States, percentage of debt held by foreign countries and a breakdown of federal spending. He then launched into a 10-minute monologue on the federal debt.”

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.

Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.

PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.

Ryan’s PowerPoint slides were officially labeled: “Our Unsustainable Debt (U.S. Debt Held by Public as a Share of Economy),” “Your Share of the Debt,” “Who Funds Our Reckless Spending?” and “How the Government Spends Your Money.”

The Romney campaign was furious. But Ryan reportedly said, “Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.”

According to Ryan’s official schedule, on Wednesday he “will attend a Victory Town Hall at Walker Manufacturing in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a Victory Rally at America the Beautiful Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Sources close to the Ryan campaign tell me his two new PowerPoint presentations will be: “How a Bill Becomes Law” and “Canada: Friendly Giant to the North.”

Ryan Fever. Catch it!

I caught a clip of a Romney/Ryan campaign stop today in Ohio. People were chanting Ryan..Ryan..Ryan. Rombot had to remind them that the ticket is Romney/Ryan. Awkward!

Turns out that the previous article was satire. Poe's Law Strikes Again

Wow - I can't believe that you fell for that... but Kudos for being honest about it.

Scorpion wrote:

Wow - I can't believe that you fell for that... but Kudos for being honest about it.

Yeah,well I'm in pretty good company. Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman,Mediaite,Lawrence O'Donnel on MSNBC,Steve Benen of the Rachel Maddow blog,and Raw Story among others also apparently took the story seriously.

Artie60438 wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

Wow - I can't believe that you fell for that... but Kudos for being honest about it.

Yeah,well I'm in pretty good company. Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman,Mediaite,Lawrence O'Donnel on MSNBC,Steve Benen of the Rachel Maddow blog,and Raw Story among others also apparently took the story seriously.

Wow. That's unbelievable. I'm really surprised that Krugman fell for it. I just can't imagine a Vice-Presidential candidate openly acting like that, at least not before an election. It would be political suicide.

The main reasons,IMO,that the story sounded feasible is this actual quote that was made a day or two before and the fact that Roger Simon isn't usually known for doing satire. Then add in the fact that conservatives like Peggy Noonan had started to criticize the campaign publicly and it becomes easier to believe.

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If the Republican ticket loses in November, the rush by Mr. Ryan and other 2016 hopefuls to position themselves for the Iowa caucuses “is going to look like Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/us/politics/conservatives-want-ryan-to-campaign-more-aggressively.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

Paging the fat lady....Paging the fat lady.....Get ready....

Paul Ryan: 30 Percent 'Want Welfare State,' 70 Percent 'Want The American Dream' (VIDEO)

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WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, share a similarly dim view of a very large portion of Americans, according to previously unreported remarks by Ryan. Both believe that many of their fellow citizens are dependent on government and have no motivation to improve their lives -- but they disagree over the precise number.

Romney's estimate, famously, is 47 percent. For Ryan, it's 30 percent.

"Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want the welfare state," Ryan said. "Before too long, we could become a society where the net majority of Americans are takers, not makers." (It's not definitively clear whether Ryan said "the welfare state" or "their welfare state." HuffPost originally transcribed it as "their welfare state." Regardless, the comment was made in reference to people on government assistance.)

Ryan's comments were delivered as part of his keynote address at The American Spectator's 2011 Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner, which the magazine posted online. A reader tipped HuffPost to Ryan's speech, given in November -- six months before Romney's videotaped remarks.

Yeah,30% of Americans want to be on welfare because it's such a fun way to live

Paul Ryan retreats deeper into mathematical fantasy

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Buzzfeed posts video of Paul Ryan answering questions at a town hall meeting, and the exchange that’s getting some attention is one in which a constituent pressed him for specifics on his plans.

But there's another moment that deserves more attention. In it, Ryan finally did get a bit more specific about the middle class deductions the Romney plan would not target to pay for its enormous tax cuts.

This makes the Romney plan’s math even harder — and more likely to explode the deficit. Here’s the key bit (at around the 5:30 mark), in which Ryan is talking about taxes on the rich:

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“If you subject more of their income to taxation — more of their income is taxed — and that allows us to lower revenues for everybody across the board. That means middle class taxpayers have lower tax rates, and there’s plenty of fiscal room to keep these important preferences for middle class taxpayers — you know, like charitable donations, or buying a home, or health care. Every time we’ve done this, we’ve created economic growth.”

. . .

But this will make it even harder for Romney and Ryan to keep their pledge to make their plan revenue neutral. Remember, the Romney plan would cut taxes across the board by 20 percent for everyone, and would supposedly pay for those tax cuts by targeting loopholes and deductions enjoyed by the rich. But the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that this is not mathematically possible — to maintain the plan’s deficit neutrality, you would have to target loopholes that benefit the middle class, too, hiking their tax burden. Yet here Ryan seems to be ruling some of them out as targets.

“This does make the math harder, because he’s taking things off the table that would generate revenue to pay for the rate cuts,” Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told me.

. . .

By seeming to take some middle class deductions off the table, Ryan made the math even more hallucinatory. This might be good politics — Ryan is getting more specific in promising not to raise middle class taxes — but it further confirms that Romney and Ryan have completely jettisoned deficit neutrality as a goal of their plan, and that they are selling people a fiscal bill of goods that doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Turns out the One Honest Republican is anything but...

The Paul Ryan Legend Dissipates

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Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential candidate is subjecting him to all manner of strange new indignities, such as questions about public policy that are different than those that his own press staff would have written. The Washington Post reported this weekend that Ryan has opposed bipartisan compromises to reduce the budget deficit. The facts in the story aren’t new. (If anything, they understate the active, crucial role Ryan has played in killing these deals.) What’s new is that the publicly available facts about Ryan’s opposition to bipartisan deficit reduction is penetrating the media narrative about him, which has always presented him as the very opposite.

And then there was Ryan’s surreal interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News:

. . .

Wallace is trying to do something that Ryan is not used to: ask him how the numbers in his plan add up. The Romney tax plan is premised on a mathematical impossibility. It promises to reduce tax rates by 20 percent and cover the lost revenue by eliminating tax deductions, exempting tax breaks for investment income. Even making a series of assumptions ranging from friendly to impossibly friendly, it can’t add up. The lost revenue from the tax rate cuts on income over $250,000 exceeds the available revenue from eliminating deductions. Even Republican attempts to disprove this finding have inadvertently confirmed it.

In the interview, Wallace tries to walk through the facts with Ryan. He begins by asking about the cost of the rate cuts, which is about $5 trillion over a decade. Ryan refuses to answer the question. He tries various tricks to avoid it. First he pretends Wallace is asking a different question — that he’s asking about the net cost of the entire plan, rather than the gross cost of the rate cuts. He cracks jokes about the unreliability of statistics. He filibusters by making a speech about economic growth.

Wallace asks the question seven times, and Ryan fills one minute and 48 seconds avoiding it. Finally, the final time Wallace asks Ryan to give him the math, Ryan asserts, “It would take me too long to go through all the math.” There was plenty of time if he hadn’t spent two minutes dodging the question! In any case, the math doesn’t take a long time to explain, but Ryan doesn’t want to explain it, because it would reveal unavoidable and unpopular trade-offs in the campaign’s tax plan that he’d rather conceal.

. . .

Ryan’s role in the budget discourse was not to be questioned, but to question others. If he was asked to comment, it was to express his sadness over Obama’s alleged unwillingness to enact the bipartisan debt plans that Ryan in fact killed.

Ryan is still an extremely skilled bullshitter — vastly better at it than Romney. But he’s actually seeing, for the first time, questions that attempt to pry information out of him, rather than the batting practice lobs to which he’s accustomed. He’s going to emerge from the race with his legend punctured.

[quote="Heretic"]Turns out the One Honest Republican is anything but...

The Paul Ryan Legend Dissipates

You're gonna love update added to your article..

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Update: Ryan explains his strategy to a talk radio host, "When you're offering very specific, bold solutions, confusion can be your enemy's best weapon." In other words, when you're specific and bold, your enemy will try to trap you into being specific. Don't let them!

Seriously.... how did this asshole get a pass from any conservative honestly concerned about the deficit? How did either of them, for that matter...