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Paul Ryan's speech at the RNC last night was superb - and thus has brought the left out with in shrill and strident response. First, the speech - and if you haven't seen it, do please watch:
Flipping over to Memorandum shows the left's response, all minor variations on a common theme - leading one to ask, is the Journolist still active? At TNR, Jonathan Cohn wrote "The Most Dishonest Convention Speech . . . Ever?" James Downie at Wapo has penned "Paul Ryan's Breathtakingly Dishonest Speech?" while the Wapo editorializes about "Mr. Ryan's Misleading Speech." At Salon, Joan Walsh has written "Paul Ryan's Brazen Lies."
Each one of those articles is a cookie cutter. Let's take a look at what Walsh, for example, claims are lies:
His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.
But that’s not all. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence. He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs). He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations.
He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.
And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves.
Other than that, it was a great speech.
Okay, one at a time:
"His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash."
Obama has raided Medicare for current seniors and applied those funds to pay for Obamacare. Indeed, Obama bragged about it at the time of Obamacare's passage. So, the lie here is what? Yes, Republican's want to cut about a trillion from Medicare - so that our nation remains fiscally solvent, not to fund yet another welfare program. The left utterly refuses to acknowledge the elephant in the room - that Medicare, left unchanged, cannot possibly survive without bankrupting the nation. Moreover, and most importantly, Walsh ignores that Ryan's plan for Medicare doesn't touch current seniors or those close to being able to rely on Medicare.
"He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008"
Ryan's lie here is apparently that he had the temerity to point out that Obama came to the Janesville GM plant in 2008 and said "I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years." The plant closed and remains closed. Nowhere in his speech does Ryan blame the closing on Obama, but he did use it to highlight the larger issue of Obama's horrendous failure to restart our economy. Indeed, at several points in his speech, Ryan went out of his way to say that Obama did not cause the failed economy - only the failure to recover.
He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs).
Ryan talks about the net impact of the Stimulus, and Walsh calls that a lie why? Apparently, Ryan can only address the failed Stimulus if he itemizes each individual line item. And as to those jobs "saved," we are in the worst recovery in our modern history. Does Walsh really want to pretend that Obama's record on jobs is something to be celebrated?
"He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations."
And the lie here is? Obama has wholly ignored the Simpson Bowles commission - and he did so in order to avoid having to make any cuts or reforms. Ryan did in fact vote against Simpson Bowles, but did so because "it not only didn’t address the elephant in the room, health care, it made it fatter." To say that Ryan and Obama are both the same on this issue is utterly disingenous.
He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.
Apparently its not Obama to blame for the $5 trillion increase in debt during his presidency, its Paul Ryan for voting for things that - Walsh neglects to tell us - wholly predated Obama's presidency. Shameless.
"And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves."
Yes, because we all know that Obama never said that:
Apparently, the word "lie" now means to raise any fact that the left doesn't like. The left, Walsh and seemingly every other leftie in the MSM, is misusing the word no doubt for its impact and to create a narrative demonizing Ryan so they don't have to have the adult arguments. Any time over the past half century, that would have worked. But today, its whistling past the graveyard and, if 2010 is any indication, a majority of the voters know it.
Paul Ryan is under the left's skin.
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