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The Most Dishonest Convention
Speech ... Ever?
Jonathan Cohn - August 29, 2012
Fox News' Sally Kohn: Paul Ryan's RNC Speech 'Was
Attempt To Set World Record For Blatant Lies'
Paul Ryan's speech at the
Republican National Convention on Wednesday was full of lies, according to Fox
News contributor Sally Kohn.
According to Fox News columnist
Sally Kohn, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican
National Convention on Wednesday "was an apparent attempt to set the world
record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped
into a single political speech."
"On this measure, while it
was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold," Kohn wrote.
In a surprising move, Fox News
joined CNN, The Huffington Post, the Washington Post's Wonkblog, and
ThinkProgress in publishing a fact-check of the Republican vice presidential
nominee's speech, finding that the speech was full of lies and misleading assertions.
Kohn, who describes herself as a
"progressive voice on Fox News," wrote in her Thursday column that
though Ryan came off as likable during his speech, his misrepresentations and
omissions "caused a much larger problem for himself and his running
mate."
In contrast, several Fox News
commentators praised Ryan's speech on air after the event, without mentioning
his misleading claims, according to Media Matters.
In her column, Kohn called out
four lies in Ryan's speech. She criticized Ryan for blaming President Obama for
the shutdown of a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., that actually was
closed during the Bush administration. She also knocked Ryan for pinning the
blame for S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt on Obama, when Republicans in Congress
helped precipitate the downgrade by threatening to refuse to raise the debt
ceiling.
"The good news is that the
Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of
additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through
the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth," Kohn wrote.
You can read Sally Kohn's full
takedown of Paul Ryan's speech for Fox News here.
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Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words
By Sally Kohn - Published August
30, 2012 - FoxNews.com
1. Dazzling
At least a quarter of Americans
still don’t know who Paul Ryan is, and only about half who know and have an
opinion of him view him favorably.
So, Ryan’s primary job tonight
was to introduce himself and make himself seem likeable, and he did that well.
The personal parts of the speech were very personally delivered, especially the
touching parts where Ryan talked about his father and mother and their roles in
his life. And at the end of the speech, when Ryan cheered the crowd to its
feet, he showed an energy and enthusiasm that’s what voters want in leaders and
what Republicans have been desperately lacking in this campaign.
To anyone watching Ryan’s speech
who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of
the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around
nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while
watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters
isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality.
On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his
speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.
2. Deceiving
On the other hand, to anyone
paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent
attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and
misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure,
while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the
Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of
additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through
the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have
already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.
Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the
downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President
Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened
not to raise the debt ceiling.
Fact: While Ryan blamed President
Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was
actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal
spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry
bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from
closing.
Fact: Though Ryan insisted that
President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to
government, that isn't what the president said. Period.
Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused
President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare
reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients
out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget
plan .
Elections should be about
competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not
competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without
voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that
standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation
in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.
3. Distracting
And then there’s what Ryan didn’t
talk about.
Ryan didn’t mention his extremist
stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance
that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.
Ryan didn’t mention his previous
plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.
Ryan didn’t mention his numerous
votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was
president.
Ryan didn’t mention how his
budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of
Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further
and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.
These aspects of Ryan’s resume
and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle
them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to
voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get
the chance.
At the end of his speech, Ryan
quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can
be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."
Ryan may have helped solve some
of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive
voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record,
Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.
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The Most Dishonest Convention
Speech ... Ever?
Jonathan Cohn - August 29, 2012
You’re going to read and hear a
lot about Paul Ryan’s speech on Wednesday night. And I imagine most of it will
be about how Ryan’s speech played—with the party loyalists in Tampa, with the
television viewers across the country, and eventually with the swing voters who
will decide the election.
I’d like to talk, instead, about
what Ryan actually said—not because I find Ryan’s ideas objectionable, although
I do, but because I thought he was so brazenly willing to twist the truth.
At least five times, Ryan
misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the
context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or
even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to
hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting
his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country.
Here are the five statements that
deserve serious scrutiny:
1) About the GM plant in
Janesville.
Ryan’s home district includes a
shuttered General Motors plant. Here’s what happened, according to Ryan:
A lot of guys I went to high
school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama
said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant
will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.
Well, as it turned out, that
plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And
that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised
is nowhere in sight.
By the way, nobody questions
that, if not for the Obama Administration’s decision to rescue Chrysler and GM,
the domestic auto industry would have crumbled. Credible estimates suggested
that the rescue saved more than a
million jobs. Unemployment in Michigan
and Ohio, the two states with the most auto jobs, have declined
precipitously.
2) About Medicare.
Ryan attacked Obama for “raiding”
Medicare. Again, Ryan has no standing whatsoever to make this attack, because his
own budget called for taking the same amount of money from Medicare. Twice.
The only difference is that Ryan’s budget used those savings to finance Ryan’s
priorities, which include a massive tax cut that benefits the wealthy
disproportionately.
It’s true that Romney has pledged
to put that money back into Medicare and Ryan now says he would do the same.
But the claim is totally implausible given Romney's promise to cap non-defense
spending at 16 percent of gross domestic product.
By the way, Obamacare's cut to
Medicare was a reduction in what the plan pays hospitals and insurance
companies. And the hospitals said they could live with those cuts, because
Obamacare was simultaneously giving more people health insurance, alleviating
the financial burden of charity care.
What Obamacare did not do is take
away benefits. On the contrary, it added benefits, by offering free
preventative care and new prescription drug coverage. By repealing Obamacare,
Romney and Ryan would take away those benefits—and, by the way, add to
Medicare's financial troubles because the program would be back to paying
hospitals and insurers the higher rates.
3) About the credit rating
downgrade.
Ryan blamed the downgrading of
American debt on Obama. But it was the possibility that America would default
on its debts that led to the downgrade. And why did that possibility exist?
Because Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling, playing chicken not just
with the nations’ credit rating but the whole economy, unless Obama would cave
into their budget demands.4) About the deficit.
Ryan said “President Obama has
added more debt than any other president before him” and proclaimed “We need to
stop spending money we don’t have.” In fact, this decade’s big deficits are
primarily a product of Bush-era tax cuts and wars. (See graph.) And you know
who voted for them? Paul Ryan. 5) About protecting the weak.
Here’s Ryan on the obligations to
help those who can’t help themselves:
We have responsibilities, one to
another – we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all
responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure
of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.
… We can make the safety net safe again.
The rhetoric is stirring—and
positively galling. Analysis from the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities shows that 62 percent of the cuts in Ryan budget
would come from programs that serve low-income people. And that’s assuming he
keeps the Obamacare Medicare cuts. If he’s serious about putting that money
back into Medicare, the cuts to these programs would have to be even bigger.
Among the cuts Ryan specified was
a massive reduction in Medicaid spending. According to a report by the Kaiser
Family Foundation and Urban Institute, between 14 and 27 million people
would lose health insurance from these cuts. That’s above and beyond the 15
million or so who are supposed to get Medicaid coverage from the Affordable
Care Act but wouldn’t because Romney and Ryan have pledged to repeal the law.
I realize conservatives think
that transforming Medicaid into a block grant, so that states have more control
over how to spend the money, can make the program more efficient. But Medicaid
already costs far less than any other insurance program in America. And even to
the extent states can find some new efficiencies, the idea that they can find
enough to offset such a draconian funding cut is just not credible.
Update: I clarified the passage
on Medicare.
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