Paul Ryan's first week: Heavy on attacks, light on wonkery
Part of Ryan's approach is grounded in tradition: The historical role of the vice presidential candidate is less to offer specific policy proposals than to ensure that voters don't trust those offered by the other side. Vice President Joe Biden is playing that part for the administration, tearing apart Ryan and Mitt Romney just as much as Ryan lambastes Obama (case in point: Biden's infamous "chains" comment earlier this week).
But part of it also is by design. Ryan's aides see a value in having him spend most of his time focusing on Obama's record.
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"This election presents a clear contrast," said Ryan spokesman Michael Steel. "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a plan for the middle class that will get our economy moving and create jobs, while the president's campaign is resorting to the politics of frustration and division because they can't defend their failed record."
Ryan's stump speech already has taken on a fairly consistent structure in the dozen or so speeches he has delivered in the past week.
He reviews Romney's retooled, five-point plan to help the middle class, criticizes Obama for running a negative campaign, and discusses an issue or two designed by Romney's Boston headquarters to drive the day. Monday was welfare in Iowa; Tuesday was energy in Denver and the foreclosure crisis in Nevada; Wednesday was student loans and Medicare.
Each of the topics has been given brief treatment that is heavily weighted toward criticism of Obama. Take, for example, Ryan's mention of the foreclosure crisis during a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Tuesday evening.
"Of all the places, of all the places that need jobs and for home values to rebound, it's Nevada," he said. "It's amazing. Since the president took office, 8.5 million foreclosure filings. Home values down an average of $20,000. Eleven million homes underwater. Nevada ranks fifth in foreclosures. The unemployment rate ... 11.6 percent in Nevada. You deserve better than that. You deserve jobs in your economy, you deserve an America that's heading in the right direction," Ryan said.
The subject received less than one minute in an 18-minute speech. If there were no housing solutions offered, it may have been because Romney and Ryan have similar views on foreclosures that may not play well in Nevada.
"Don't try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit bottom," Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last year. Ryan told TV host Charlie Rose much the same thing in 2010: "Housing is going to have to hit bottom before it can come up."
Romney's speeches have been lighter on policy details since he began promoting the five-point economic plan this summer in place of the 59-point plan he rolled out last year. The speech he won most attention for over the past week was when he accused Obama of being an angry, desperate president and told him to "take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago."
Obama, at multiple stops over three days this week in Iowa, spent plenty of time in his stump speech sharply criticizing the Romney-Ryan approach to taxes and the federal budget. He also defended his record and ran down a laundry list of policies he'd like to pursue in a second term.
One subject that has elicited some specificity on both sides is energy. Obama talked about wind and solar energy Tuesday in Haverhill, Iowa, stressing his support for extending a wind-industry tax credit, and said he wants to end $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry. The same day, in Lakewood, Colo., Ryan offered a detailed critique of Obama energy policies and said the GOP ticket would ease regulations on emissions and hydraulic fracking, and approve the Keystone Pipeline.
Ryan does appear to acknowledge that he'll need to be more than an attack dog in the months ahead. As he said in Nevada, "You see, we're not going to go to people in this country and say, 'The other guy is so bad, therefore vote for me by default."
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I'll ask again Obama drones.
What are the president's plans and policies for the next four years?
Not to allow the economy to slid like the last GOP administration.
The problem is most of those programs you mentioned are not Constitutional and are unethical. You dont take from one person and give to another in need. That is WRONG!
Al you have to do is go to theTreasury website and look at the deficit numbers for each year. No year in the last 30 has been without a deficit. And by definition, you cannot have a deficit and have a surplus.
Astounding!
The GOP (Guardians of Privilege...Theirs, NOT yours]
are running representatives of two cults for the highest offices in the land.
Catholics: The largest institutionalized pedophilia organization on the planet.
Mormons: The cult, founded by a twice-convicted con man that declared war on The United States of America and has never rescinded that declaration.
Beware of cultists lusting for power.
Religion poisons everything, especially government.
Makes sense. If they let him talk about his screwy ideas, nobody would vote for Romney. As long as he's just cheerleading the TeaBagger hate-machine, I suppose he's of some value to Romney.
"Of all the places, of all the places that need jobs and for home values to rebound, it's Nevada," he said. "It's amazing. Since the president took office, 8.5 million foreclosure filings. Home values down an average of $20,000. Eleven million homes underwater. Nevada ranks fifth in foreclosures. The unemployment rate ... 11.6 percent in Nevada. You deserve better than that. You deserve jobs in your economy, you deserve an America that's heading in the right direction,"
Excuse me Mr. Wizard, but it was the GOP's out of control, un-regulated, too-big-to-fail, Wall Street Greed Fest the totally destroyed the worlds financial system. Remember that Mr. Top Down?
Nevada deserves better than that? Your prescription is to bring it all back? Let Wall Street loose again? Your an idiot.
Your "take care of the Rich guys" tunnel vision, economic policies are what did this in the first place. Nevada was just fine before the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the removal of Glass-Steagall. We were just fine before the Commodity Futures Exchange Act of 2000.
Frankly, it's amazing Obama and the Dems kept us all out of soup lines considering you and your Tea Party sand baggers have been throwing the country under the bus for the last couple of years.
Those property values you are talking about where vapor. Meaningless. They should never have been that high in the first place. To say they should not have fallen is ridiculous. The fact is they never should have RISEN that high to begin with , if YOU Mr. Ryan had done ANYTHING for the country since you have been in office.
14 years in office and you've passed 2 Bills? Just what the @#$@ have you been doing in office for the last decade and a half besides polishing up the GOP's GoPack memo word list?
Just what the country needs, another lying Parrot of the Rich to screw over the country.
I DO have a problem with the GOP sitting on their behinds for 8 years letting the boom-bust-meltdown cycle continue far beyond what should have been allowed. The reason it was allowed to blow out was that the GOP's economic model requires the economy to grow (regardless of weather the engine driving it is detrimental to everyone else on the planet), which (by their calculations) feeds back into the system and increases revenue for the Govt. That's a cornerstone of Romney and Ryan's "give the money to the Rich" approach.
It didn't work and it doesn't work. The 2000-2008 boom bust proved it. It was nothing more than Wall Street coming up with an bulk way of moving trillions through their hands to make a percentage on the money. They could have cared less where the money came from or was going to (in this case, Fannie and Freddie, I.E. the taxpayer). They lacked moral character and at the end of the day, left the US taxpayer holding the bag while the rich have an estimated 32 Trillion hidden away in offshore accounts. So much for the GOP's increasing the Treasury's receipts. They have it setup where they can "legally" hide their money overseas, so it does the Treasury no good at all.
Stimulus was absolutely necessary. You went from Wall Street, artificially pumping Trillions of extra dollars (gotten from all over the world, that we didn't earn) into our economy and it stopped and went to zero. Think of the Stimulus as a stop gap injection to fill in the loss of all that money while the economy get used to being at where it really should have been at in the first place, if the Greed mongers hadn't screwed up the system.
The Rich and the GOP want those days to return. They speak of the situation that existed in 2006 as if it were normal. It wasn't. It was totally artificial. All the money was borrowed, all the jobs were boom and bust jobs. It's not coming back. It never should have happened in the first place and I'm sorry, the GOP was in charge during that time and it WAS their fault it went so far.
The Dems tried to patch up Wall Street and they were shut down by the GOP.
They tried to pass the best shot at a long term, bi-partisian budget a few years ago with 2010 Simpson-Bowles Plan, only to have morons like Ryan shoot it down.
REF:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-13/ryan-opposed-debt-reduction-plan-romney-used-as-a-model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform