OTHER VOICES
“With a choice bold rather than safe, Mitt Romney is chiding his fellow Americans—politicians included—to get serious. Having written that nobody required candidates for president in 2008 to face runaway entitlement costs, Romney is forcing that crisis to prominence: His running mate is the U.S. politician who, at grave risk to his own career, has argued most compellingly for entitlement reform. We don’t know whether adding Paul Ryan to the ticket costs Romney the presidency or wins it for him. We do, though, know what the Wisconsin Republican delivers to the 2012 campaign: With his passion to revive this nation’s treasury and economy, Ryan injects stark substance to an uninspiring, cheap-shot contest we’ve called a race to the bottom. Our authority on Ryan-as-force-vector is none other than Democratic strategist … James Carville. Asked recently … if Ryan was the veep prospect the Obama campaign would most like to run against, Carville answered, ‘I don’t think he’d be their first choice, but he’d be a clarifying choice. The race wouldn’t be about personalities, it’d be about big issues.’ “
—Chicago Tribune “In picking Paul Ryan … Mitt Romney has obviously attempted to reset the tone and scope of the presidential debate. Yet the quandary that poses … is undeniable. Ryan’s House-approved budgets the past two years aim to: gut Medicare and turn it into to a declining voucher program; diminish and privatize Social Security; cut Medicaid for the poor and its nursing home coverage for formerly middle-class Americans; slash safety spending by 60%; reduce student aid; give more tax breaks to corporations and the ultra-wealthy; and raise taxes on the nation’s broad middle class, mainly by eliminating their tax breaks … But it still doesn’t project a balanced budget until 2040, largely because it calls for huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and a promise to keep raising the Pentagon’s budget with inflation. Romney can hardly advance that … fiscal approach as his own agenda and win the presidency. So it’s no coincidence that … Romney quietly began spreading the word that Ryan’s budget views would not rule his policies. Which raises the questions, why Ryan, and what, specifically, are Romney’s own fiscal goals?”
—Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press
‘Ryan injects stark substance to an uninspiring, cheap-shot contest…’