Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Closing ranks in the House

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Robert Costa notes Paul Ryan’s smooth transition back into “team player” mode, especially in regards to House Speaker John Boehner:

As Ryan has mulled his future, Boehner has welcomed him back into the fold. They’re not buddies, but they’re working together behind the scenes as Boehner negotiates with the White House.

The benefits for both men are clear: Ryan keeps his head down during a negotiation that may end badly, and focuses on the big policy picture as he looks, perhaps, toward the 2016 presidential campaign. Boehner gets more leeway, because if Ryan is happy, the speaker’s critics (who are close with Ryan) tend to be more reserved. Though a handful of conservative members can’t stand Boehner, they implicitly take their cues from Ryan.

Republican unity is a figment of the Times’ imagination

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Contra the post immediately before this one, New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer has a piece today talking up Speaker of the House John Boehner’s supposed “strong backing” in Congress’ lower chamber:

With a daunting fiscal crisis looming and conservatives outside the House torching him at every turn, Speaker John A. Boehner might be assumed to have a shaky hold on his gavel. Instead, it appears he is enjoying the broadest support of his tumultuous two-year speakership from House Republicans.

As Mr. Boehner digs in for a tense fiscal confrontation with President Obama, the strong embrace from a broad spectrum of the rank and file may empower him as he tries to strike a deal on spending cuts and tax increases that spares the country a recession, without costing Republicans too much in terms of political principle.

The problem is, nowhere in the article does Steinhauer present even a reasonable facsimile of evidence supporting her hypothesis. At one point she writes that “member after member spoke in support of” Boehner at a private House Republican meeting, and elsewhere quotes from a handful of post-election chastened Republicans who are now more willing to accept compromise in theory (if not in practice). These vignettes, paired with the observation that Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor have signed onto Boehner’s $800 billion proposal — a brief moment of agreement on an issue on which even Republicans in Steinhauer’s article admit they have virtually no leverage — constitute the near-totality of Steinhauer’s thesis.

Must be a slow news day over at the Grey Lady, so they decided to concoct some of their own.

Socialist America

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John Nichols suggests that all the talk of creeping “socialism” during the Republican primaries and beyond may have actually increased Americans’ positive disposition towards socialism generally:

A new Gallup Poll finds that socialism is now viewed positively by 39 percent of Americans, up from 36 percent in 2010. Among self-described liberals, socialism enjoyed a 62 percent positive rating, while 53 percent of Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic gave socialism a thumb’s up.

Needless to say, this provoked the predictable fine whine of right-wing media. The conservative Washington Times newspaper declared: “Yes, Democrats, liberals favor socialism.” The Business Insider website announced: “Everything Republicans Fear About Democrats Is True.” William F. Buckley’s old magazine, National Review, allowed as how there is “much that is peculiar, and much that is worrying” about the new polling data.

That reactionary Republicans get a little hysterical at the mention of the word “socialism” is not news. But the reaction to there reaction is. No two groups of Americans talk so much about socialism in so many public settings these days as Republican candidates and conservative commentators. And this appears to be influencing the discourse.

Indeed, it is fair to say that nothing has done more to promote the cause of socialism than the ranting and raving of Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. It’s not just that the right has spread the word about socialism, raising the ideology’s profile to levels rarely experienced in recent decades—if ever—and associating the ideology with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, President Obama and a lot of other programs and people that Americans actually like. The fact that so many agitated, angry and—at least in some cases—politically toxic characters go apoplectic at the mere mention of the ideology has undoubtedly caused millions of Americans who don’t know much about socialism to say to themselves, “Anything that Paul Ryan does not like must have some merit.”

But I have to agree with the National Review assessment that the Gallup survey information “is worrying”—at least for conservatives. The most significant increases in sympathy for socialism over the past two years—since the last time Gallup polled on economic and ideological terms such as “socialism” and “capitalism”—have been among self-identified “conservatives” and “Republicans.”

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Preparing for the worst

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One of the fascinating aspects of the three debates so far (two presidential, and one vice presidential) has been to watch how the candidates have handled their alleged vulnerabilities. In each debate, one or both of the candidates had a significant weakness or flaw that was ripe to be exploited by his opponent.

The thing is, everyone knew this. And that means the candidates — and more importantly, their debate prep teams — knew this even better. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the candidates have had some of their strongest moments on issues that were expected to trip them up.

In the above video, President Obama takes Mitt Romney to task for his criticism regarding the consulate attack in Benghazi, leaving the former Massachusetts governor flailing a bit in his response. This was supposed to be Romney’s trump card, and Obama — who had clearly been waiting to respond to this — instead turned it into perhaps his strongest moment of the night.

We saw similar dynamics during the vice presidential debate. Most expected Joe Biden to dominate Paul Ryan on foreign policy and for the opposite to occur in relation to Medicare. But in truth, something a little closer to the opposite took place: Ryan opened fire very early on regarding the attack in Libya, leaving Biden to issue a less than reassuring rebuttal about America’s resolve. Meanwhile, Biden proved perhaps more convincing on Medicare than Ryan did, never allowing the Congressman to drag the conversation into the weeds.

In the first presidential debate, the largest elephant in the room was Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, which Obama — in his dazed and confused performance that night — never managed to bring up. But assuredly Romney had a response all cued up beforehand for that as well. (Interestingly, Obama managed to work in a reference to the 47% issue on the last question of last night’s debate, a phenomenal tactical move that denied Romney the chance to use a prepackaged and rehearsed rebuttal.)

As the upcoming final debate next Monday is on foreign policy, technically the subject should be moving back onto Obama’s turf. But if there’s anything these first three debates have taught us (other than the enormous versatility of the common binder), it’s that waiting to pounce on your opponent’s weakest point does not always pay dividends.

Debates and video games

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Robert Schoon watched last night’s vice presidential debate on his Xbox:

Xbox’s simple presentation was a surprisingly liberating, compared to watching on T.V.. I had been watching other channels that night, and all of them, even the broadcast networks, had some gimmick on the screen, whether it was split-screen “reaction” shots, twitter feeds, ubiquitous crawl at the bottom of the screen, or even just visually displaying the moderator’s question. Though it didn’t look revolutionary in the “digital age” sense, it was a quiet rebellion against the distracting visual packaging that all the news channels have seemingly decided upon.

Then the polls started popping up on screen. At about half an hour before the end of the debate, a little blue band appeared with a question and three choices. After choosing one, a bar graph would appear, giving instant results, in percentages, for each option. I counted at least fifteen questions before I lost track, and though the questions tracked well with the debate – foreign policy questions while Vice President Biden and Paul Ryan talked Afghanistan, questions about candidates’ religion during the abortion portion – the polling became so rapid-fire as to become distracting. Plus, they were beside the point, unless that point was to relentlessly confirm that roughly two-thirds of Xbox Live watchers are liberal and about ten percent had no opinion about anything.

Still, it’s a start…

Personally, I found ABC News’ coverage last night nauseating. I turned on the live Internet feed about 15 minutes before the debate started, and all the hosts were talking about was the apparently horrifying news that Twitter usage would be banned in the debate hall. Then, during the debate itself, an absurdly large blue bar kept popping up showing which keywords were trending on Twitter. Enough, already.

Immediate thoughts

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Full disclosure: I have not steered entirely clear from post-debate news coverage, and I was quite active on Twitter during the debate itself. That said, I’ve yet to absorb much post-debate spin at all, so here are my initial thoughts, pre-groupthink phase:

1) Everyone knew Joe Biden would be on the attack, and he was. However, I really think he overplayed it — especially with the laughing while Paul Ryan was speaking. (He also interrupted Ryan way too much.) There was far too much of that going on. It’s not a good — or a serious — image for Biden to be guffawing on the split-screen while Ryan discusses Iranian nuclear aspirations. Three or four times might have been alright, but Biden was laughing so much that it was quickly obvious that the laughter had been part of the debate prep. Biden’s good enough (and authentic enough) on his own without resorting to prepackaged and insincere facial expressions.

2) That said, when it was time for him to speak, Biden was on fire. He was lucid, specific, and even demonstrated the perfect level of righteous indignation at Ryan’s naïveté. It felt like the old master schooling the cocky young apprentice. Especially on the crucial issue of Medicare, Biden never allowed Ryan to get into the weeds with obscure statistics and numbers: he simply steamrolled over him and directly addressed seniors — his peers — while looking directly into the camera. Ryan didn’t have the facts on his side; Biden did. And he kept pressing Ryan for specifics, which Ryan was unable to provide.

3) At first, I liked the moderator. But when she started directing nearly all her follow-up questions to Paul Ryan and at one point even seemed to mock him (I can’t remember what exactly she said, but the tone of one of her questions to him was distinctly ironic), I was disappointed. Biden was taking care of business just fine; she should have at least pressed Biden on some of the things he was claiming, if for no other reason than the fact that Obama-Biden have an actual record they have to account for. Romney-Ryan may be promising the moon, and it’s absolutely appropriate to press for specifics (no matter how uncomfortable it makes them), but in my opinion she looked biased by consistently failing to follow up on Biden’s defenses of the Obama administration.

4) While I do believe Paul Ryan got schooled, I don’t think there was much he could have done differently. He maintained a calm, even keel throughout the debate, suffering through Biden’s mockery and near-constant interruptions. He spoke slowly and deliberately. Unlike the presidential debate, where it was more apparent that Obama had lost it than that Romney had won it, this time the tables were turned: Joe Biden clearly won the debate, but Ryan definitely did not do anything to embarrass himself or Mitt Romney. My one major beef with Ryan’s performance (other than the fact that he defends indefensible policies) was something he may or may not even be able to control: he just looks and feels insincere, even cheesy. His closing line elicited uproarious laughter among the group watching the debate with me: he looked straight into the camera and recited an obviously scripted stump speech with absolutely zero authenticity.

5) My takeaway? Biden’s performance will absolutely rile up the base. I also think it may make some inroads with seniors, especially those already wary of the sly-seeming Paul Ryan and his voucher plan. Biden is simply more credible to older people, especially as someone of retirement age and from a working-class background. As for the independents, I could easily imagine Biden’s performance working against him: he was perhaps overly combative with the constant interruptions and unconvincing laughter. When he spoke, he was spot-on; it’s what he was up to when he wasn’t supposed to be speaking that could be a big problem.

6) One thing I really didn’t like: Joe Biden bringing up his deceased wife to score a political point. Just…not classy.

This was definitely a high point for me of the election season so far, and I couldn’t have agreed more with the Twitter user who posted, “I wish I could watch this debate forever.” Amen, brother.

Pre-debate advice…

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…from me. The progressive blog Left Call has just posted an essay I wrote that further develops some of the themes I’ve been discussing recently here at The First Casualty:

When Joe Biden and Paul Ryan leave the stage in Kentucky tonight following their vice presidential debate, do yourself a favor: turn off the TV. The singular element that makes such events so unique – the utter unpredictability of what will happen for those 90 short minutes – evaporates the moment the channel switches from the debate floor to the spin rooms.

There is virtually nothing as tired and repetitive as television debate coverage. I know this because I’ve seen plenty of it.

Read the rest of it at Left Call.

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