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Friday, August 17, 2012

Ryan Not A Diversion For Romney, But A Step Toward The Discussion Romney Wants to Have

By Susan Duclos


Conservatives and Republicans highlight Mitt Romney's business experience as a major plus, his wealth as proof that he makes good business decisions in order to increase his wealth.

Liberals and Democrats highlight Romney's wealth as if it is a bad thing, he is rich, you are not, therefore he is a vulture and should be held in contempt.

Both sides seem to agree on one main point.

Mitt Romney is a good business man.

Therefore it is amazing to see how media spins Romney's choice of Paul Ryan, implicitly implying that by picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, it has somehow derailed the conversation that Romney wanted to have.

An example from ABC News:

ANALYSIS:If Mitt Romney's decision to announce his vice presidential pick earlier than most other presidential candidates in modern political history was supposed to turn the campaign away from the personal (his record at Bain, his refusal to release more than two years of tax returns, etc.) and back onto the sagging economy, it hasn't worked out that way.

At Paul Ryan's homecoming at his alma mater, Miami University of Ohio, the big takeaway was the Republican running mate's offensive play against President Obama on Medicare -- an issue that wasn't out-front on the campaign trail until this week.

The premise, as stated, is that "if" Romney wanted to turn the topic from personal to the sagging economy, it hasn't worked and second, the implication that Romney has somehow been derailed from his original path because of the Liberal and Democratic attacks against Ryan, the same ones from 2010 and 2011, that immediately followed the announcement of his name on the GOP 2012 ticket.


 Dealing with the premise first, budgetary issues and entitlements, which Medicare is considered an entitlement, is a large part and growing larger every year, of the economic discussion that Romney wanted back in the forefront

Since Medicare is what the media and liberals immediately brought to the front of the discussion when Ryan was announced, let's just use that as an example here.

CMS.Gov (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) released their findings in April of 2012, showing that Medicare is only expected to remain solvent until 2024.

Without reforms, Medicare will not be solvent anymore and will be gone for the next generation, the people who are paying into now.

This is why Paul Ryan, despite the screeching from the far left that he wants to "end Medicare as we know it", says "We can save Medicare" but not without making changes now, before it goes totally bankrupt.

The economy, the issue Romney wants to discuss, cannot be fixed, cannot be turned around, without addressing all of the issues that are destroying it.

"The easiest thing for me to do would be to do nothing and just complain. It's time to start rewarding politicians with ideas to solve the country's biggest problems."--- Paul Ryan, April 2011, Kenosha, Wisconsin

Who better to explain this complicated issue to the public than Paul Ryan who is known as a policy wonk that is capable of toning down his rhetoric to make budgetary issues easily understandable for those of us that are not budgetary experts and haven't made a career of dealing with economic issues as Paul Ryan has and is now the House Budget Committee Chairman.

Even the Democratic co-chair of Obama's  deficit commission, Erskine Bowles, also the former Clinton White House chief of staff, tells a class of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Septemeber 2011, "I'm telling you, this guy is amazing. I always thought I was OK with arithmetic. This guy can run circles around me. He is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did by four trillion dollars." (Video here)

Now, onto the implication by the original ABC News quote above, that Romney' was derailed or diverted by the Ryan choice, because now the focus of interviews are on Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" budget and Medicare.

Look at the preplanned complete rollout of the campaign ads by the RNC and Mitt Romney, as well as the Romney/Ryan interviews and stump speeches showing that Obama, as part of Obamacare has already cut over $700 billion from Medicare, which he admitted publicly was done to fund his Obamacare health law.

"The president, I'm told, is talking about Medicare today," Ryan told supporters at Miami University, where he graduated from college. "We want this debate. We need this debate. And we will win this debate."

I would propose that Romney not only expected and planned for the instantaneous liberal attacks against Ryan, but that he set it up knowing they would happen, in fact, used liberals own knee jerk reactions ruthlessly, and planned every single step of what has happened since announcing Paul Ryan as his running mate.

And is now.................. laughing all the way to the bank because of how easily Obama, Democrats and liberals were to play.

Just as any smart business man would.