The Down-Low on the Paul Ryan Pick

What a crazy weekend it was, indeed.  Paul Ryan has officially been named the VP for Romney.  Personally I have long assumed he would be the pick.  He is a white horse to the Republican base, he is very well-spoken, and will aid team Romney in the debates where Biden has a tendency to be soft-spoken and veers off the road occasionally.  So yes, to a would-be viewer who has zero knowledge of the political climate, Ryan will probably end up looking pretty good.  He is going to have to answer for his extreme ideology and privatization of medicare, and before that social security as well as medicare.

First, the pick says a lot about the image of the Romney-Ryan campaign.  Romney is running on the economy and absolutely nothing else.  Obama is running again on the economy, as well as marriage equality, women’s’ rights, immigrants’ rights exactly everything one would assume a Democrat would run on; progress.  Romney is running on congress (I did not forget to capitalize the word, but it is the opposite of progress).  During the primaries he has vowed on video to end funding for planned parenthood, that he is against abortion, he is severely Conservative, and he’s held the other side of that argument as well on each of those topics.

Ryan’s purpose, and his only purpose is to incite the base on election day and be a great speaker and divide and conquer.  I have a strong hunch that he is looking for credibility for a 2016/2020 Presidential candidacy.  In fact, personally, I think that the Conservative base would be much happier with a Ryan-Romney Presidency than the current situation.

I would not say that Ryan’s most recent plan “destroys” medicare, but it certainly ends it as we know it.  The plan offers vouchers or in Liberal-Speak ‘coupons’ to buy healthcare coverage on the open market.  Personally, the free-market is not the next place I would look for tossing medicare, not just short-term but long-term as well.  The free market has its whims and certainly its ups and downs, that comes with the free market regardless.  But when those who need it most it’s important to remember that the free market guarantees nothing, you’re putting faith in the free-market and the shareholders of your health.  The government on the other hand guarantees the coverage, and the bills will be paid.

In all, during election-cycle pandering to the base to turn out voters, the pick in August allows for three months of an initial spark in interest for overcoming Ryan’s extreme views on the budget considering he is the House Republican Budget Chairman and effectively leads his party and its interests in the government budget.  The three months time frame is key to Romney’s decision to travel to Florida and separate himself from Ryan’s Path to Prosperity and at the same time allowed Ryan to travel to Iowa for the state fair on the same stage that Romney claimed that “corporations are people, my friend” as Romney received out-spoken backlash from the statement as his form of testing the waters in a very bold and insulting manner.

Choosing Ryan is going to have initial blowback on the Romney-Ryan campaign efforts but given the three-month time frame, there is still plenty of time for voters particularly in the middle which is what elections are all about, to forgive and forget.  This will ultimately spell trouble for Obama in the long run, and hopefully Democrats will remember come November, as finicky as they are.