Tag: Paul Ryan

Tracking Romney’s Positions on Women’s Reproductive Rights, His Reversals on Those Positions and Lies about His Former Positions

Jon Ponder

In the video above, William Saletan at Slate Magazine walks us through the labyrinthine twists and turns in Mitt Romney’s various positions, walk-backs and lies about his position on abortion during his political career. Warning: Make sure you are seated when you watch this because it will make you dizzy, if not woozy — but not in a good way.

Yesterday, inspired by a dramatic shift in his favor among unmarried women voters in post-debate polls, Romney added another twist to his ever-changing views on abortion when he told the editorial board of the Des Moines Register that “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

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With Campaign in Freefall, Paul Ryan Is Goin’ Rogue – Refers to Mitt Romney As ‘The Stench’ [UPDATED]

Jon Ponder
Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan being booed as he read his speech from a teleprompter at an AARP gathering in September 2012
Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan being booed as he read his speech from a teleprompter at an AARP gathering in September 2012

Update: Turns out that Poltiico’s Roger Simon intended his Ryan’s going rogue story to be an Onion-style satire. However, a GOP operative in Iowa — the state where Ryan will launch his presidential bid in three years — did say that Ryan would have to “wash the stench of Romney off of him.” Ryan really was booed at the AARP convention last week, and he really has begun using Romney-esque Powerpoint presentations on the federal budget during campaign events. But everything else in the Politico story was meant to be a joke.

With nothing but bad news coming from the polls in the wake of the release of a secretly recorded video in which Mitt Romney’s asserted that 47 percent of Americans are hopeless, self-victimizing wards of the state for whom, as president, he would bear no responsibility, it now appears that, like the previous teavangelical Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan is goin’ rogue.

“Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.”
-The Stench’s running mate, Paul Ryan

In the New York Times earlier this week, an Iowa Republican operative said, “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”

Now, according to Roger Simon at right-leaning Politico.com, Ryan has begun referring to Mitt Romney as “The Stench”:

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Paul Ryan Is Pushing Romney to Shift Campaign Focus from Economy to War on Women

Jon Ponder
Source: Guttmacher Institute
Source: Guttmacher Institute

The fact that the weak employment report for August did not notably depress support for Pres. Obama has spooked Mitt Romney’s campaign about its all-in “it’s the economy, stupid,” strategy for the 2012 election. According to a report from Buzzfeed Politics, Romney’s teavangelical vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is urging the campaign to pivot to social issues, including the GOP’s efforts to put government in charge of women’s reproductive decisions:

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Hate Group Spokesman for GOP Base: Romney Has Put a ‘Bag Over Ryan’s Head’ and a ‘Sock in His Mouth’

Jon Ponder
Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican vice presidential nominee, reading his speech to a hate-group rally from teleprompters
Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan -- whose head appears to be unbagged -- reading his speech to a hate-group rally from teleprompters

The fringe dwellers that comprise the Republican base met in Washington this week for the Values Voters Summit, which is sponsored by the Family Research Center, which is on the hate-group list maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the conclave, FRC spokesman Bryan Fischer launched the campaign to pre-blame a Romney-Ryan loss in November on Mitt Romney’s insufficient ideological purity — but note how he uses analogies based on kidnapping and violence (or, more aptly perhaps in Fischer’s case, BD-SM):

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Paul Ryan’s Congressional Campaign Goes Up with Ads in His District Despite Claiming 25 Point Lead over Democratic Challenger Rob Zerban

Jon Ponder

Wisconsin Democratic U.S. House candidate Rob Zerban
Wisconsin Democratic U.S. House candidate Rob Zerban
The Associated Press is reporting that Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan is launching ads in his Wisconsin district in support of his campaign to retain his House seat if he and Mitt Romney lose in the fall.

The ad buy comes after the campaigns of both Ryan and his Democratic challenger Rob Zerban, a business owner and elected county official, released information on separate, private polls that produced widely different results:

[The Ryan campaign’s] survey of 400 likely voters showed a gap of 58 to 33 percent between the two candidates, with a 4.9 percent margin of error both ways. Libertarian challenger Keith Deschler trailed at 3 percent…

A 400-person poll conducted by the Zerban campaign found the race jumped to an 8-point difference when likely voters were informed about both candidates. The additional information told to those polled and the percentage difference without that information was not available Tuesday.

It is strange that Ryan’s congressional campaign rushed to produce ads after its own internal poll found that Ryan had a 25-point lead over Zerban.

This does not add up.

Paul Ryan Refuses to Say How Romney Will Fix the Economy But Bristles At the Idea It Is a Nixonian ‘Secret Plan’

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, while David Gregory was lobbing softballs at Mitt Romney on “Meet the Press” on NBC, over on the ABC News Sunday show, George Stephanopoulos gave Congressman Paul Ryan a tougher time, especially when — at about 02:50 on the video above, which is transcribed below — Ryan refused to name a single loophole he and Romney would close in order to help pay for the massive tax cut they are promising to give the 1 Percent.

Watch how Ryan bristles when Stephanopoulos characterizes the Republican campaign’s refusal to lay out what it will do to restore economic growth as a “secret plan.”

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Paul Ryan Says He Finished a Marathon in Two Hours and Fifty-Plus Minutes – Runner’s World Says No

Jon Ponder

screenshot-ryan-marathon-finish

In 2008, Republicans nominated a candidate for vice president who seemingly could not open her mouth without lying. She lied so persistently that after the campaign, Steve Schmidt, a top strategist for the McCain-Palin campaign said, “There were numerous instances that she said things that were — that were not accurate that ultimately, the campaign had to deal with, and that opened the door to criticism that she was being untruthful and inaccurate. And I think that is something that continues to this day.”

In 2012, it appears Republicans have done it again. In his speech accepting his nomination for the vice presidency, bombarded his audience with so many lies that even Fox News could not find a way to pretend to ignore them.

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