GOP casts Biden as governing liability
Republicans attempt to draw stark contrast between vice president and opponent Ryan
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Republicans have a new rhetorical punching bag: Vice President Joe Biden.
With relentless attacks aimed at portraying President Barack Obama’s running mate as a governing liability, Republicans hope to raise the stature of GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who will debate Biden next month, and score points in closely contested states.
“Paul’s a close friend, a great family man, and he’s got a reformer’s heart,” Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said at last week’s Republican convention. “Contrast this to Joe Biden. Vice President Biden has told people out of work to ‘just hang in there’ — so much for ‘hope and change.’ ”
As Democrats prepare for their convention in Charlotte, N.C., the GOP is casting the 69-year-old former Delaware senator as a gaffe-prone crazy uncle who’s hung around the political scene too long. The strategy tries to undermine the Obama campaign’s chief surrogate and liaison to white, working-class voters and seniors, influential groups courted aggressively by both parties. At the same time, Republicans hope that sullying Biden’s image will help confirm Ryan, the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman, as a deep thinker destined to take on many of the nation’s most pressing challenges.
At the GOP convention, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who joined Obama, Biden and House Speaker John Boehner for a round of golf last year, recalled Biden telling him he was a “good golfer. And I played golf with Joe Biden, and I can tell you that is not true, as well as all of the other things that he says.”
Biden himself has given as good as he gets.
He often is the loudest voice in the campaign’s criticism against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Biden routinely bashes Romney and Ryan’s assertions of promoting a “bold” plan on taxes and the Medicare.
“There is nothing gutsy about giving another trillion dollars in tax cuts to millionaires. There is nothing bold about turning Medicare into a voucher system,” Biden said in Lordstown, Ohio, on Friday.
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who managed GOP nominee John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said Biden was a “formidable politician” and an “effective campaigner” who could garner support among voters prized by both campaigns, including blue-collar workers and Catholics in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Schmidt warned that the hits on Biden could have an unintended consequence heading into to the vice presidential debate set for Oct. 11.
“When you ridicule someone, you’re lowering expectations to a point that makes it a lot harder for Paul Ryan to score points,” Schmidt said. “There’s a downside in that.”