The left is jubilant that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his vice president running mate. The argument seems to be that Americans, by a significant majority, do not agree with the values that Ryan holds, particularly the values that are actually reflected in the “Ryan budget.” Values such as significant cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, privatizing social security and tax cuts for the rich at the expense of programs for the poor. The reasoning is that because we say we disagree with these values, we will vote against a Romney/Ryan ticket. The specific strategic argument is that this ticket loses Florida (a must win swing state) because Ryan’s budget eviscerates Medicare and threatens Social Security.
The problem with these arguments is that they fly in the face of America’s actual past behavior. When Barak Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate, conventional wisdom said he’d shot himself in the foot — Biden was another Northerner, and too liberal to help Obama get votes he needed — especially in key swing states like Florida. But Obama and Biden were such a charismatic match that they won over voters. Decades ago, the Clinton Health Care bill had provisions that American’s said they wanted. Yet, when popular politicians got done spinning it, it went down in flames.
And the Left’s response to the choice of Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate completely fails to appreciate what an attractive team these two will make. In the few images that are already available Romney and Ryan are very charismatic — they look like they are having fun and enjoying one another. The Left has, so far, totally failed to understand how important this is.
The reality of American voters is that we do NOT vote our stated values. Unfortunately, we vote on charisma. Richard Nixon did not change his positions after his loss to Kennedy in 1960. Instead he hired a media consultant to help him remake his image. And when he ran eight years later, his new image (not new positions) won over voters.
For the past four years, polls have consistently shown that Americans support affordable health care, a continued social safety net for the poor, continuing Medicare and Social Security, without major changes. Yet these values do not translate into support for politicians that vote for these values. Instead, we continue to elect politicians who do not reflect those values. So the test of America this year will be: will we vote our stated values? Or will charisma trump values ?
I’ve always voted my values and conscience. Paul Ryan is a good family man, cares about people and does not want our country to go down in flames, which it will if Obama and his crew continue to maintain power. I hope the left does get it wrong, because they are deceiving and destroying our country. With our national debt at 16 TRILLION and rising fast, all of our programs are unsustainable. You talk as if fixing the problem is somehow heartless, when in actuality letting things go on as they are until a huge social collapse ending in anarchy happens is tremendously heartless, no matter how much lip service is given to “how much they care”.
Dennis,
the problem I have with Ryan. First until his recent conversion, he said that he was motivated by a declared Jesus hater Ayn Rand. Just this should give Christians pause. Second, he was part the crowd that ran up the deficit by conyism during the Bush years. (unfunded wars, tax cuts for his rich buddies and forcing the deregulating of the banking sector that caused the great recession we are in) Now his budget is all smoke and mirrors. He is going to further cut taxes on the rich and pay of it with mysterious closing of loopholes. (He has not said and refuses to say what these loop holes are. My hope would be the reclassify of carried interest as income, but his buddy Romney pays so little in Taxes because of this loop hole, I highly doubt it.) Remember if it was not for the Ryans in the Bush years, we would have a deficit of 2 Trillion and most likely not had the CDS cause recession. So by your math the Ryans of the world caused us 14 trillion, which is about right. Trusting Ryan and his budget is like trusting the wolf with the keys to the hen house. Yes, we need to read the minor prophets again, Micah would call us away from the Rand loving Ryans of the the world.
Dennis- I don’t doubt that you vote your values and conscience, and for that I commend you. My question for you is where to you get your facts? Are you willing to listen to those who disagree and consider carefully what they say, or do you only listen to one side? Those who listen to one viewpoint all day (Christian radio or Fox News, for example) wind up “drinking the Kool-Aide”, gradually being conformed to an extreme viewpoint without even realizing it. I challenge you to seek out those who disagree with your viewpoint and spend some serious time considering their arguments.
Dennis,
You say “You talk as if fixing the problem is somehow heartless” when in fact, I made no judgment about the content of people’s values at all. I simply pointed out that people SAY they care about something, and then vote as if they don’t. This may be because they do not pay attention to what politicians actually DO, rather than what they say during campaigns. Or it may be that they don’t really value what they say they value.
You sound as though your sole value in the coming election is to bring down the deficit. If that is so, I would submit that a vote for Romney/Ryan is based on factual errors. The economic policies they propose are what got us the deficit, so these policies can’t possibly solve it. If you really wanted to lower (or eliminate) the deficit you’d vote for someone who will increase revenues (rather than decreasing them) and raise taxes on those who benefit most from the policies that ran up that deficit – the rich.
On the other hand people who SAY they are voting for Obama/Biden and also say they want single payer health care, reduced costs for health care, and/or protection of our natural resources, are not voting their values either. Because Obama not only refused to include single payer in the negotiations on the Health Care Reform act, he pushed for a bill that forces even more Americans to pay outrageous premiums to for profit health insurance companies (thus keeping costs high). And he has done little to nothing to protect the environment – from reopening offshore drilling in the Gulf with no improvement in protections, to waffling on tar sands, Keystone pipeline, fracking and other practices that are destroying our environment.
It may be that in both these cases people are simply voting for the lesser of two evils. But, if that’s the case, let’s admit that no one running reflects our values rather than pretending that one candidate does and giving them our loyalty as well as our vote. Your response supports rather than refutes my claim that we vote for charisma rather than values.