Does Mitt Romney support Paul Ryan's approach to Medicare, which would turn it into a voucher paid toward private insurance, or is he against it? Depends on the day... and the state... and that http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93874195_gop-strategists-call-romney-campaign-incoherent.htm">level of incoherence reportedly has some in the GOP worried.
The Romney messaging snafus, they note, have been relentless. Just this week, the Romney campaign repeatedly alternated between embracing Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan and distancing Romney from it. The campaign issued talking points and dispatched advisers to say Romney's plan is different. But in Florida this week, when reporters asked Romney himself about Ryan's plan, he said he supports it.
Perhaps most disconcerting is Ryan's performance in a fairly safe space -- an interview with Fox News. Ryan was unable to say whether Romney's budget would balance even by 2030, and couldn't make particularly clear how Romney's budget would balance without "getting wonky."
Earlier on Tuesday, the Romney campaign intended for Ryan's first solo interview to underscore the Congressman's policy chops. But when veteran newsman Brit Hume pointedly asked for program details, Ryan couldn't deliver. In addition, Ryan said the specifics on closing tax loopholes would have to wait until after the election. Even Hume looked visibly annoyed. "It was," said a top Republican, "an unmitigated disaster."
Here's the full video; get about 3 minutes in for the budget discussion, about the 8:00 point for the discussion on whether they have specific tax loopholes they're going to cut. (After that comes the Ayn Rand discussion.) Embedded below:
While on the air with ads saying Obama has a "War on Religion" and that he's loosening the work requirements for Welfare (which has been widely debunked) he complained on the campaign trail about Obama's "campaign of division and anger..."
However, Romney has been saying the President is a "nice guy" in nearly every speech for the past three months.
Is the Romney campaign off message? Off the rails? Or are the Romney campaign messaging folks crazy like a fox?
Comments
dregstudios 11 years, 8 months ago
The dynamic duo of Romney and Ryan would not only gut Medicare and Social Security, they’d drive the entire economy into a nose dive as long as it benefits the richest Americans. Income inequality is endangering the Middle Class and making paupers of us all who don’t have those millions upon millions of dollars. Read more about the role of Romney’s riches in this election and the power of his sacred undergarments at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/20...">http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/20... The working class of our country can’t AFFORD to allow this election to be bought and sold!
donnaladd 11 years, 8 months ago
That video is downright Palin-esque.
goldeneagle97 11 years, 8 months ago
The fact that Romney/Ryan is complaining about "hatred" and "division" from the Obama campaign is very comical. They love to dish it out, but can't take it when it's thrown back to them.
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
Lee Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Ngger, ngger, ngger." By 1968 you can't say "ngger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Ngger, ngger."
blackwatch 11 years, 8 months ago
This is a great quote, and explains why critical thinking and analysis is so crucial as to understanding polictics of self interest for minorities. You have to delve through the rhetoric to look at specific effects of policy or practice. In everything from school discpline/uniform policies to gun control and taxes, minority citizens must be confident in what would help our communities and what would hurt.
This shows that they calculate how to spin their policies that they know would be detrimental to poor and minority populations. These aren't just simple, sincerely held perpsectives on government and such. They are targeted interventions on behalf of power elites to structure and maintain social inequality. Social realites don't just happen, they are the result of purposeful planning and politicies that benefit people, most times at the expense of others. Great quote.
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
Romney is running the most flat-footed Republican campaign since Dole / Kemp.
Ryan may have expected a safe space, but he didn't get it, to Hume's credit. It was a tough though entirely fair interview. He's smoother than Palin, probably from his many years in Washington. But you can see how he has already been constrained by handlers. Clearly, he has been told to confess subordination to Romney, and to babble talking points. Ultimately, there is no way to present a coherent Republican program, because the party is pulling itself apart at the seams.
donnaladd 11 years, 8 months ago
Wow, Brian. I'd never seen those Atwater quotes. And, all, remember that Atwater was Haley Barbour's mentor on using the wink-wink southern strategy to get the racist vote. May he rest in peace.
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
I hadn't seen it until yesterday myself. But it speaks powerfully to what is afoot with Romney's welfare ads and Ryan's war on food stamps and Medicaid.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend the documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. The man was such a knot of contradictions, and his energy and charisma are hard to resist. You see that he was a working-class guy who never got respect from blue-bloods like the Bushes. You also can see how he was a product of the vicious political culture in South Carolina, where race baiting was a long tradition. The worst of it is that he doesn't seem racist in his personal views at all. Rather, he was so cynical that he knowingly used racism to destroy his rivals. In some ways, that is even worse.