Paul Ryan (Veep tomorrow?) destroys Obamacare in 6 minutes.

[_krose]

One thing is certain...

Romney just locked up the Munster vote. Who would have thought little Eddie would grow up to be so successful?

[_beastie]

Who a vice presidential pick is has almost zero impact on the outcome of the election. Paul Ryan probably won't even provide enough of a bump in WI to get Romney over. Let's not get carried away in thinking this will move huge swaths of voters in any direction.

Democrats have been trying to attack Romney for associating with the Ryan budget because the Ryan budget drastically reforms entitlements and drastically reduces taxes for the wealthy at the expense of the poor, so that will now be a clear focus for their campaigning. But the fact that they're going to run on that and not something else will have less of an impact on the eventual outcome than you might think.

Probably. However, I do think the pick says something about Romney's viewpoint right now. Ryan is a riskier pick than, say, Portman. Romney has been a very cautious candidate to this point. I think he felt like he had to do something risky to at least try to turn things around.

[_EAllusion]

I do think Ryan's views on entitlement reform are also a problem for the Obama team. Why? Because we have a massive budget deficit that is in large part driven by mandatory spending like SS, Medicare, and MA. It's easy to pretend to be super-duper serious about getting the budget under control - as Obama has done - but it's another thing to have the political courage to propose reforming entitlements by reducing payouts to enough of an extent that you actually would seriously address the problem. Pollling shows there is huge anxiety in the country over our national debt right now, as well there should be, and it isn't hard to counter attacks on entitlement reform by saying that means you aren't serious about doing anything about the problem.

Now you of course can reform entitlements to reduce payouts without going the Ryan route. For example, my candidate, Johnson, favors means-testing, raising the retirement age, and tying growth in payouts to inflation rather than wage increases. Bingo-bango. Problem solved. But you can't get Obama to admit to any serious reduction in payouts right now. This is especially humorous, because he totally did bargain away drastic cuts to entitlements in the debt ceiling crisis, but the Republicans backed away from the deal at the last minute. Obama, however, isn't going to point that out in the middle of an election because most voters aren't aware of that and thinking about it would be quite depressing to too much of his base.

Finally, the other big elephant in the room driving our national debt is absurdly high military spending. Ryan's budget doesn't touch that, which says something about priorities and who Ryan thinks should eat austerity, but it's hard to use this line of attack because military funding is such a sacred cow. Democrats are terrified of being painted as weak for proposing the kind of military budget cuts we could 1) easily get away with without compromising national security and 2) would be needed to rival entitlement reform as a means of addressing our enormous budget deficits. I'd be shocked if Obama's team touched the subject in anything but vague platitudes and empty promises form.

[_beastie]

I don't disagree with you, EA. I think Ryan should be admired for at least trying. Most politicians are scared to death to even attempt to deal with it.

[_palerobber]

Democrats have been trying to attack Romney for associating with the Ryan budget because the Ryan budget drastically reforms entitlements and drastically reduces taxes for the wealthy at the expense of the poor, so that will now be a clear focus for their campaigning. But the fact that they're going to run on that and not something else will have less of an impact on the eventual outcome than you might think.

you may be right. but then again Romney could have picked someone like Rubio who would have changed the course of the national conversation for weeks and possibly beyond. by choosing Ryan he guarantees the focus will stay exactly where Democrats want it to be.

[_palerobber]

I do think Ryan's views on entitlement reform are also a problem for the Obama team. Why? Because we have a massive budget deficit that is in large part driven by mandatory spending like SS, Medicare, and MA.

it's not a problem for the Obama team -- it's a huge gift. while it's true the American people don't like budget deficits, they don't like cutting Medicare and SS at least 10x more.

Pollling shows there is huge anxiety in the country over our national debt right now [...]

CBS News/New York Times Poll. April 13-17, 2012. N=957 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.

"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended

48% Economy/Jobs
5% Health care
5% Budget deficit/National debt
3% Education
3% Partisan politics
3% Moral values/Family values
3% Fuel costs
2% Big government/Bureaucracy
24% Other
4% Unsure

[_EAllusion]

it's not a problem for the Obama team -- it's a huge gift. while it's true the American people don't like budget deficits, they don't like cutting Medicare and SS at least 10x more.

It's not 1995 anymore and packaged the right way I think you can get significant movement on entitlement reform. I mean, that's happening. Obama, the Democrat president, was prepared to offer substantial cuts in entitlements as recently as last year so even he didn't find it to be political suicide.

Incidentally, how do Americans feel about the dollar collapsing and the US economy falling into a depression? Good or bad?

"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended

48% Economy/Jobs
5% Health care
5% Budget deficit/National debt
3% Education
3% Partisan politics
3% Moral values/Family values
3% Fuel costs
2% Big government/Bureaucracy
24% Other
4% Unsure

Wrong kind of poll to look at. All that tells you is that the economy/jobs is issue number one issue. That national debt comes in at number 3 is actually telling in a sneaky way. When given a choice of terms to describe their concern over the national debt (not a problem, minor problem, major problem...) around 40% of people go right to the word "crisis" which is significantly elevated over earlier polling with similar questions done over the years. That's suggestive of significant anxiety over the debt in the public.

[_palerobber]

i wouldn't be surprised if large numbers of people do call it a "crisis" given that the mainstream media is constantly calling it that (and not without some merit). but i have a hard time taking these findings seriously when any specific policy that would substantially improve the deficit picture almost always polls very poorly.

[_Drifting]

The Wisconsin congressman is behind a House of Representatives-backed budget plan that seeks to curb overall entitlement spending and changes government health insurance for the elderly and poor into a voucher-like system to save costs.

Democrats this week criticised Mr Romney for embracing the proposal that critics say is painful to the poor and elderly.

Sky News

But at least Mitt The Twit and his wealthy, income hiding cronies will still be fine...

(I liked where Romey introduced Ryan as the next 'President'. Smooth)