The Democrats started attacking Paul Ryan minutes after Mitt Romney selected him as the VP candidate. They are focusing on Ryan’s budget proposals which–if you listen to them–will starve everyone from children to seniors while the rich like Romney aren’t required to pay their “fair share.” Their narrative is told through various ads and cliches, but their argument is simple:<\/p>\n
1. Those who achieve wealth through business pursuits are inherently crooked. (athletes, actors and liberal politicians are exceptions)<\/p>\n
2. Because Mitt Romney achieved wealth through business pursuits, he\u00a0is crooked. (those like Warren Buffett and Jeff Immelt who play along with the government are exempt)<\/p>\n
3. Romney’s selection of Ryan reinforces the above because Ryan is willing to cut spending to deal with the coming fiscal catastrophe.<\/p>\n
4. Romney is protecting the top 1% and fails to acknowledge that the current financial malaise could be readily solved if only the wealthy “contributed” a little more.<\/p>\n
While this argument fails to recognize that the private sector funds the government in the first place, there is a deeper issue here. Runaway government spending is a serious problem and the piper will be paid one day if we do not reform Washington. Serious cuts must be part of that reform. Raising taxes on the “rich” ignores the fact that top wage earners already pay most of the taxes anyway and the gap is far to great to be closed without substantial spending reductions. There is no rational argument to avoid this reality. Obama’s retort only strikes a chord on the emotional level.<\/p>\n
Enter Paul Ryan. He’s a pragmatic conservative. He’s bright, understands the issues, and has been willing to put serious ideas on the table.\u00a0I don’t agree with everything he has proposed, in short because I don’t think he goes far enough. But those on the left oppose his budget proposal because it goes too far<\/em>. Ryan deserves massive credit for addressing the problem head-on, and his addition to the ticket exposes a core problem with the Obama administration: They have no serious alternative. The numbers just don’t add up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Democrats started attacking Paul Ryan minutes after Mitt Romney selected him as the VP candidate. They are focusing on Ryan’s budget proposals which–if you listen to them–will starve everyone from children to seniors while the rich like Romney aren’t required to pay their “fair share.” Their narrative is told through various ads and cliches, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}