"ROMNEY PICKS RYAN - THE MASCULINE VERSION OF SARAH PALIN" by Cliff Wilson, Cliff's Notes 8/11/2012
Presumptive Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney has announced his choice for the Vice-Presidential nomination, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Whether a choice based on the Presidential candidates comfort level, or a Hail Mary pass due to low standing in the polls, or another cave-in to the right wing of his party, Romney’s choice is reminiscent of the recent McCain selection of Sarah Palin. He has gone for youth, excitement and right wing charisma rather than solid ability to run the country if anything should happen to him in the unfortunate event that he became President.
Paul Ryan now joins some impressive Republican lists. There is that list of great Republican Vice Presidents who made such a mark on our country’s history starting with Hannibal Hamlin and through Schuyler Colfax and Levi P Morton, Garret Hobart and Charles Curtis to Dan Quayle.
Then of course there is that list of Republican Vice Presidential candidates who didn’t win and went on to become outstanding leaders of their party and nation starting with William L Dayton and going on through John Logan and Charles McNairy and William E. Miller (a NY Congressman).
There is one list that Ryan would try to get on: the list of Republican candidates who lost and became the Republican Presidential candidate - only one on that list Bob Dole VP candidate in 1976 who was tapped by his party 20 years later to run for President and lose against Bill Clinton.
There are two lists Ryan isn’t going to get on. The list of Republican Vice Presidents who become President - Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur are that list. To get on that list the Republican ticket has to win this year and then something untoward has to happen to the President.
There is a list that no Republican is on Vice Presidential candidates who lose and go on to become President of the United States. There is only one Democrat on that list - Franklin Delano Roosevelt the champion medal winner of our Presidents.
History aside, Cong. Paul Ryan now has the opportunity to help this country by assuring the defeat of Mitt Romney. With his open attack against Medicare - and despite his attempts to obfuscate the matter his plan to privatize and voucherize Medicare changes that system from national health insurance for the elderly to assistance in paying for private insurance. Ryan’s plan kills Medicare as we know it. And, left to his own deserts he would end Medicaid by letting each state decide if they even want that program. Let no one misunderstand Cong. Ryan’s true intentions. If successful in gutting Medicare he and the radical right wing tea party Republicans will again raise their cry to privatize Social Security and end it as social insurance for the elderly into a fund to infuse more capital into the stock market.
The Republican party of 2012 unlike General Eisenhower’s Republicans is hell-bent to undo the pillars of the New Deal - Great Society of the 20th century. Privatize social security, voucherize Medicare, return Medicaid to the states, end assistance to preventative health care for women such as Planned Parenthood and WIC, end Pell grants, stop environmental and health and safety regulations, bust labor unions, and replace public schools for all with private schools for the few. All this is in the guise of solving our fiscal problems while reducing taxes on the wealthy to minuscule percentages and continuing the world’s largest military budget without a comparable enemy in site (although the Republicans would have us view Iran as that enemy since most Americans have figured out that China is out to beat us economically no militarily).
Wake Up America! WAKE UP! This may just be our last chance to prevent Rep. Ryan from pushing all of us over the cliff not just Grandma.
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