Political Roundup

Romney's 47% Gaffe

• Russel Reno (First Things) vents about "absurd Republican rhetoric" (9/18/12)
• Ramesh Ponnuru thinks The Right Is Wrong to Pin Obama’s Edge on Welfare State (Bloomberg 9/17/12)
• DarwinCatholic (The American Catholic) thinks I think this particular media tizzy is particularly silly, and the pundits declaring Romney to be badly hurt by this are mostly reflecting the beliefs of a bubble in which the GOP is already hated. Thoughts?
• Henry Olsen, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute reflects on Romney’s drift from the true heart of conservatism (Washington Post 9/19/2; hat tip: Wheat & Weeds):

  It wasn’t so long ago that mainstream conservatism represented these values. We indexed income brackets and personal exemptions to inflation in the early 1980s to protect middle- and low-income families. Conservatives created the child tax credit in 1997 and expanded it in 2001 to reduce the tax burden for parents. In the past decade, we championed a flat tax that contained a generous exemption for a family of four, precisely so those least able to pay would not be forced to.

  I believe the mainstream conservative still believes in these things. But when Romney divides the world into makers and takers and presumes that our ability to pay federal income tax is a measure of which group we belong to, he sends a different message. He implicitly tells average Americans that their quiet work doesn’t “make” America unless they are entrepreneurs who make enough money. Worse, he tells them that their lives aren’t even dignified, that they are “takers” who are unable to exercise personal responsibility over their lives.

  I don’t know if my dad, who never graduated from college and who worked on his feet for 40 years, ever had a year in which he didn’t pay federal income taxes. Perhaps in 1970, when he was laid off during a recession and had a mortgage, two children and a third on the way. But I know he and millions like him “made” America because they made the things we buy and, more important, they made people like me.

  I will vote for Romney despite his flaws. The alternative is unacceptable: In this matter, I really have no choice. But in broader political action I do have a choice, and I choose to rededicate myself to building that shining city on a hill that Reagan evoked when he brought conservatism out of the wilderness.

Speaking of "gaffes"

• How the media turned Obama's foreign policy bungle into a Romney gaffe, by Philip Klein. Washington Examiner 9/12/12.

• "I like being able to fire people" -- you've heard this quote attributed to Romney numerous times during the Democratic National Convention in a negative manner, as a capitalist robber-baron with a penchant for sticking it to the working class. Context provides a different story, and who would disagree with his point?

  "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," Romney said at a Monday breakfast in New Hampshire, when talking about health care. "You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say, 'I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.'"

  "I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them," he said.

... revisionist history

• "Obama saved the auto industry." At least that's what we are led to believe from everybody up to Michelle Obama and the President himself. From Daniel Ikenson (Cato @ Liberty), Details of the Auto Bailout You Won’t Hear in Charlotte; for the entirety of Daniel's congressional testimony, see: Lasting Implications of the General Motors Bailout Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending Committee on Oversight and Government Reform United States House of Representatives. 6/22/11.

... and flat out lies

• Is Barack Obama America's most dishonest politician? - Powerline on Obama's appearance on David Letterman, his attribution of $1 trillion in national debt to his predecessor (false) and all too convenient "forgetting" of the total debt, when asked by his host how much was actually his.

More on Medicare and Health Reform

• Why Medicare Must be Reformed, in One Chart, by Veronique de Rugy. (National Review's "The Corner" 9/4/12). Speaks for itself.

• Obama More Flexible on Medicare Than Rhetoric Suggests (National Journal):

  In his convention speech in Charlotte, President Obama vowed to block the Republican Medicare reform plan because “no American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies.”

  But back in Washington, his Health and Human Services Department is launching a pilot program that would shift up to 2 million of the poorest and most-vulnerable seniors out of the federal Medicare program and into private health insurance plans overseen by the states.

Some Reading

• Economist Thomas Sowell has published a new PDF pamphlet on “Trickle Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts For the Rich” - timely reading for this election.

A "Ryan Roundup" ...

Love him or hate him, the "future of the Republican party", new poster-boy for conservative Catholic politics and vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan is in the news. A roundup of serious (and not-so-serious) commentary from recent days ...

• Assertion without Evidence Paul Zummo (The American Catholic) finds that "When it comes to Paul Ryan and his evil Randian ways," the usual requirement to marshal evidence for a serious argument is cast aside.

  Benjamin Wiker (National Catholic Register): The Paul Ryan-Ayn Rand Connection: What’s a Catholic to Think examines Ryan on Rand, and Rand herself, and finds that:

  Ayn Rand’s philosophy, then, is a mix — good and bad. But the bad is really bad, so that whatever good there is would have to be carefully extracted. To be perfectly frank, I find Ayn Rand to be deeply repulsive — the dark side is, again, really dark. So, if Paul Ryan wants to attract Catholic voters, he’s going to have to make much clearer what he’s taking — and even more, what he’s leaving behind.

  As Ryan said recently in his own words:

  I am nothing close to an objectivist, but I do think Ayn Rand did a service, did a great job of outlining the morality of capitalism, of making the moral case for freedom, free enterprise and capitalism. You don’t have to buy into all the objectivist stuff to appreciate what she did on that front.”

  Personally, while Ryan's professed appreciation of Ayn Rand extends well beyond "when he was young", if he now repudiates Rand's "objectivism" and atheism, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt. I'm sure we haven't heard the last on this topic and it will be interesting to see what Ryan himself has to say in the months ahead.

• Dolan: Ryan Is a ‘Great Public Servant’ Kathryn Jean Lopez (National Review) talks with Cardinal Dolan of New York about his friendship and correspondence with Rep. Paul Ryan.

• Responding to Michael Sean Winters (National Catholic Reporter), Linda Bridges (National Review) on Paul Ryan's alleged "dissent" from Catholic social teaching.

• Robert Costa on Paul Ryan's Mentor. (NRO, 8-15-12). (And no, it's not Ayn Rand).

Paul Ryan on Abortion

• On the matter of abortion - here is Ryan himself: The Cause of Life Can’t be Severed from the Cause of Freedom (Paul Ryan's congressional website, September 10, 2010):

  ... after America has won the last century’s hard-fought struggles against unequal human rights in the forms of totalitarianism abroad and segregation at home, I cannot believe any official or citizen can still defend the notion that an unborn human being has no rights that an older person is bound to respect. I do know that we cannot go on forever feigning agnosticism about who is human. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” The freedom to choose is pointless for someone who does not have the freedom to live. So the right of “choice” of one human being cannot trump the right to “life” of another. How long can we sustain our commitment to freedom if we continue to deny the very foundation of freedom—life—for the most vulnerable human beings?

• And here is a detailed survey of Ryan's voting record on abortion. (Ryan carries a 100% rating from the National Right to Life.

Presumptive vice presidential nominee for the Republican party Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) hold a campaign event and makes a speech at The Villages in Florida, accompanied by his mother -- a small business owner and Medicare recipient.

On Reforming Medicare

• The Return of Mediscare (The Editors, National Review)

• Grasping the Medicare Distortion, by Yuvan Levin (NRO, 8-12-12):

  Medicare will not be the central issue of this fall’s campaign — economic growth and jobs are far more important to voters. But President Obama and his supporters seem intent on distracting voters from the failed economic policies of the past four years by scaring them about the Romney-Ryan Medicare reform. And it is already perfectly clear that their criticisms of that reform are based on either a misapprehension or an intentional misrepresentation of the actual proposal, and of the very significant ways in which it differs from past Medicare-reform ideas (including those proposed by Ryan in the past). So it is worth taking a moment to understand the proposal — generally known as the Ryan-Wyden reform after its originators, Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon — and to see what its critics are missing or misrepresenting. ...

• Fact-Checking the Obama Campaign's Defense of its $716 Billion Cut to Medicare, by Avik Roy (The Apothecary). Avik's blog has been a recent discovery and proven to be interesting reading, unpacking -- for the non-statistically and economically minded like myself -- the difficult topics of Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), and consumer-driven health care. (Full disclosure: he's a fellow of the Manhattan Institute and an outside consultant to the Romney campaign).
• More Mediscare, by James Capretta and Yuval Levin. (Weekly Standard) A Harvard Journal of the American Medical Association study "turns out to offer one of the strongest cases yet published in favor of premium support."

• The $6,400 Myth: Breaking down a false Obama Medicare claim (Wall Street Journal 8-19-12):

  One of President Obama's regular attacks on Paul Ryan's Medicare reform is that it would force seniors to pay $6,400 a year more for health care. But merely because he keeps repeating this doesn't mean it's in the same area code of accurate.

• The Republican Medicare Equation: The Best Defense = A Good Offense + Lots of Paul Ryan - Pete Spiliakos (Postmodern Conservative) believes the best thing the GOP can do to counter Democrat criticism is to let Ryan be Ryan.

... and on a comical note

• Admit It, I Scare The Ever-Loving S*** Out Of You, Don't I? - a faux-editorial to The Onion 8-13-2012 . . . cutting a little too close to reality for some Democrats. [Warning: profanity]:

  Face it: I’m not some catastrophe waiting to happen, like a Sarah Palin or a Dan Quayle. On the contrary, you have the exact opposite fear. I’m a solid, competent, some might say exceptional, politician.

• Democrat Erskine Bowles praises Paul Ryan And His Budget Plan - A video of former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, Democratic co-chair of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, praising Ryan's budget plan.
• HEY GIRL ... IT'S PAUL RYAN.

Paul Ryan for VP (Roundup)

• Rep. Ryan: 'We Have Pursued Solidarity but Abused Subsidiarity' In an exclusive interview, the chairman of the House Budget Committee defends his interpretation of Catholic social teaching. (National Catholic Register May 4, 2012.
• Applying Our Enduring Truths to Our Defining Challenge, by Paul Ryan. (National Catholic Register, April 4, 2012).
• "America’s Enduring Promise", Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The 2012 Whittington Lecture, Georgetown University. April 26, 2012. | Video
• Catholic Social Teaching and the Ryan Budget, by Thomas V. Berg. Professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary, Yonkers, NY. "Paul Ryan’s budget plan does not violate principles of Catholic social teaching; it is one prudent application of them."
• Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Teaching (Roundup) The American Catholic April 29, 2012.
• The Bishops Were Wrong On The Ryan Budget - Pat Archbold (National Catholic Register) challenges the popular assumption that "The Bishops collectively condemned the Ryan Budget."