These criticisms of Ryan’s speech are absurd. Everything Ryan said is factual and a fair reading of the record and prior events.
First, it is said that Ryan’s own budget cut Medicare by the same amount. But the Ryan budget not only repealed all of Obamacare’s spending, it also doesn’t specify the kinds of Medicare cuts Obamacare does: It calls for the same level of savings but doesn’t spend the money elsewhere and leaves room for Congress to pursue those savings in ways that don’t rely on price controls and the elimination of benefits.
Ryan’s critics are also up in arms over his mention of the closed GM plant in Janesville, Wis. They claim that Ryan blamed President Obama for the closing of the plant — but Ryan explicitly said that the plant was already closing when then-candidate Obama came to Janesville in 2008: “We were about to lose a major factory,” Ryan said last night.
But let’s step back and look at Ryan’s larger point. He was making the argument that, even with the Obama bailout, the Obama economy is so bad that the plant is still closed and, what’s worse, there’s no prospect that other vibrant industries will take its place. That’s absolutely a fair indictment of the Obama record, especially so because Obama went to the plant and promised hope and change in 2008.
Then there is the business of the U.S. credit downgrade and the Bowles-Simpson commission. Ryan pinned S&P’s decision to lower the credit rating for debt issued by the U.S. government on the president’s failure to lead on fiscal matters, and chastised him specifically for appointing the Bowles-Simpson commission and then doing nothing with the commission’s recommendations. Ryan’s critics say he is being hypocritical because Ryan himself also opposed the Bowles-Simpson recommendations.
But when Ryan opposed that plan (because it left in place Obamacare’s massive new entitlement spending), he proposed an alternative and passed it through the House of Representatives. What did President Obama do? Nothing. He appointed the commission to buy time during the 2010 campaign season, and then, in 2011, decided that leading on the deficit wasn’t in his political interest. So he proposed no plan of his own. And then when Ryan proposed his plan to actually head off a fiscal crisis, the president attacked it in the most partisan and demagogic terms possible. Is it any surprise, with this kind of behavior from the president, that the parties weren’t able to come to an amicable agreement? Any fair reading of the record shows that the president has abdicated his leadership responsibilities on fiscal matters. He richly deserves the blame for the downgrade.
Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech was a tour de force, and a clear success. One measure of that success is the intensity and emptiness of the attacks coming his way. The irony is that these attacks — intended to damage Ryan by undermining his credibility — are more likely to be seen by the electorate for what they really are: desperate and dishonest tactics from those willing to say and do anything to hang on to power.
