Democrats cheered by Romney’s Ryan pick
MITT Romney’s surprise pick of youthful ideologue Paul Ryan as his Republican running mate delighted conservatives — but it may have excited President Barack Obama’s Democrats even more.
The president has anchored his re-election campaign on a conceit that the wealthy Romney would shower the rich with tax cuts, and saddle the middle class with the bill, in the form of higher taxes and cuts to key social programs. Obama aides believe that Ryan, an incubator of intellectual conservatism who the president has already demagogued as the epitome of “social Darwinism” fits that attack line perfectly, thanks to his deficit cutting budget proposal.
Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, defined Ryan as “the architect of the radical Republican House budget” and said he backed Romney’s plans for a $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education spending.
“Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy.
“As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy,” Messina said. “Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.”
Messina said Ryan’s budget — which passed in the House but was blocked in the Senate — would end the cherished Medicare health care system for seniors and turn it into a voucher system.
The picking of Ryan and a certain row over Medicare will give Obama new hope of hanging on to the biggest swing state — Florida — where the votes of retirees are hugely important.
Democrats will also zero in on another possible liability of the Romney-Ryan ticket — a lack of foreign policy experience — following the Republican nominee’s error strewn foreign tour.
David Solimini of the progressive Truman National Security Project said the pick showed that Romney did not take national security seriously. “He chose Paul Ryan, who has no national security experience. Worse, Ryan has shown, time and again that he is willing to cut essential national security priorities in order to protect tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.”
While the Nov. 6 election will be dominated by the economy, a sudden national security crisis could leave the Romney-Ryan ticket exposed in contrast with Obama’s strong credentials as commander-in-chief. Obama has long seen Ryan as a profitable political target.
In April 2011, the president delivered a speech billed as outlining his plan to cut the deficit. Instead, he forensically demolished Ryan’s budget plan in a ruthless power play which embarrassed the Wisconsin congressman, sitting in the audience.
This year, laying the philosophical groundwork for his re-election bid, Obama unveiled another savage critique of the Ryan budget.
“It is a Trojan Horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plans it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” Obama said. “It is thinly veiled social Darwinism.” While Obama may think he has a winning case, the Republican vice presidential drama will pose new challenges for his re-election team.
Romney’s campaign has been panned by many analysts as lackluster, vacuous and led by a candidate devoid of a political North Star, who has flip flopped from moderate positions to appeal to the hard right Republican base.
Now, at least, his campaign has intellectual heft, with some prospect that his selection could lift a race that both sides have dragged into the gutter with ferociously negative advertising.
The selection sets up a substantive contrast between the Romney-Ryan ticket which vows to cut state spending and dole out new tax cuts, and Obama’s vision of an activist government that can ease the struggles of the middle class.
