Romney’s veep Paul Ryan is exactly the same mistake John McCain made picking Palin: to activate the base he has picked the partner most likely to alienate the middle.
Is anyone in America in favour of privatising Medicare? A few, probably. Maybe a half million rural nutters, Chicago academics and fourth-generation billionaires.
But three hundred and seven million Americans will very much want to keep it, not just because it saved their parents’ lives, but because the Meltdown showed, and showed forcefully, how much a corporation can lose when the wind changes, and they’d prefer on the whole not to die of poverty in their seventies or eighties when they might have been saved from death, free of charge, by the taxes they paid when they were younger, the money they gave to Medicare.
And there has never been in any country on earth a fifty-one percent vote in favour of privatising anything.
There has not even been a five percent vote.
It is something governments only ever sneak through, as Keneally did, and Blair did, and Iemma tried to, and Bligh did, and fall from power because of. Without the privatisations that did for them, Bligh’s party and Keneally’s party would have five times as many seats as they do now. And Blair’s party still in power. And everybody knows it.
Except Andrew Fraser of course, the esteemed young Queensland suicide bomber. What a fool he is, and always was. See my chapter Shame, Fraser, Shame in Goodbye Babylon.
So Romney has signed his death warrant, by embracing policies most Americans abhor.
It’s possible the jig is up in America, and the rich after 2008 aren’t much admired any more.
We shall see in November anyway. Obama was always lucky, and the tide is once again with him in the home stretch.
We shall see.
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This Ryan strikes me like a thunderbolt as being extremely unimpressiv3e. The electronic media will have a field day of Hewsonic proportion. I just hope he ends up with much cake in his face. His running mate is even more mormonic
That thunderbolt should have got you in the backside. Whilst the American addiction to entitlements will last for some time (until social security goes broke in 2035 or so) Ryan is very impressive indeed. Not only that, his name will become more familiar to you in future campaigns when he is the actual candidate for president of the USA.
I’m with you M Ryutin, as soon as the American Stock Markets, TBTF Banks,and major Industrial manufacturers, refuse the entitlements of never ending tax payer funded and Federal Reserve Bank printed stimulus and artificially low interest rates, and finally stand on their own feet and deny the offered entitlements the better. Well said!
Please don’t get me started on corporate entitlements, crony capitalism (GE, Solyndra etc) or banks too big to fail (which are now even bigger)! Seeing that the US Justice Dept decided to not prosecute Goldman Sachs (or anyone else) over financial crimes of the GFC (or even get stuck into ex-G-Sachs chief and big Obama financial bundler Jon Corzine over the missing one billion plus from MF Global) it makes you cringe at the excesses.
While Goldman Sachs have provided US government figures for years (across administrations) it is not hard to see why the flood of them with Obama lead people to call him “President Goldman Sachs” or to see why Obama gets the lion’s share (60-70%) of Wall street campaign money.
Michael Heseltine once said that elections are won and lost on the economy. Things have changed somewhat – I think immigration policies will play a significant part in the US election, as they did in the last UK one.
As far as I know US Medicare is not up for actual privatisation under the old ‘Ryan Plan’ Bob. Besides Obamacare took 500 billion (with a capital “B”) out of it anyway. Still entitlement reform is vital unless the US is to go broke even faster than it is now. Whilst addicted to entitlements, far more than they paid into it, it will be a hard sell, but Ryan can argue a case. Young people will have to wear NO health benefits when Obama-like policies send them broke. The key is having enough suckers to think ‘this won’t affect me so who cares’ to outnumber the young who might realise that they are working to pay for the seniors whereas there won’t be anything left for them unless there is change.
Watch and learn about Ryan’s skills:-
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV?id={B9DE445C-C4EF-4DA0-B0AF-49EC52EF1D80}&title=Flashback-Ryan-Destroys-Obama-In-6-Minutes
Link fixed I hope
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV?id={B9DE445C-C4EF-4DA0-B0AF-49EC52EF1D80}&title=Flashback-Ryan-Destroys-Obama-In-6-Minutes
As for US Medicare (as at 2010) as Ryan said it, it5 was a 38 Trillion (Yes capital “T” this time) unfunded liability and Medicaid growing by 21% in 2010 alone….
Lots of facts there in that speech.
The “F”-word.
Obama will win by a landslide.
Romney will do a Barry Goldwater as the US voters realise the President they have is about as good as it gets.
Australian voters may yet do the same.
I will leave you to giggle at your little joke about ‘as good as it gets’ and say it might be a landslide (kicking the can down the road, as they say, IS common there – and here). But at least the choices will be clear and after it was all over and the wrecking clear over the next four years, that ‘choice’ they made will not be able to be disowned.
Hi MRyutin, when it comes to “disowning” it’s hard to find anyone now that wants to put their hand up for Bush jnr’s increase in federal spending or the deficit he left Obama after he himself had received a surplus from Clinton. He left Obama in a mess that our generation has not seen before so it’s not really fair to talk about Obama as the reckless or profligate man anymore than it is to talk about Bush’s ideology of tax cuts and paying for wars he couldn’t afford.
It’s a mess whichever you look at it.
I couldn’t agree with you more about GWB and his profligate spending Annabell. Even though there was 911 and the needless war in Iraq when he should have smashed Afghanistan instead.
This is all tempered, however,by the realisation that Obama has created more debt in less than four years than GW did in eight. Since 2000, when the pressure was on more debt has been incurred than ever before and whilst Bush had more debt than all the presidents before him combined, that “honour” is now down to Obama and “all the Presidents combined” includes Bush in the “combined”!
I would nominate and support the Representative from the fine State of “Vested Interests”. He has been successful with a 100% winning record for at least the last 100 years. A real consensus man, regardless of the Party or President in power, Vested Interests has always succeeded where so many others have failed. He has held his own ambition in check and never found the need to be President when so many other talented individuals covet the chair in the Oval, and with his support and advice find their way there, there stay a mutually advantageous one, and on their leaving great rewards of gratitude and due recognition.
Vested Interests, he’s the man!
Fired up by Ryan’s nomination, Rupert twitters his ‘big tick’ – while Greg Sheridan gives Ryan the ‘thumb’s down’ in Rupe’s The Aus – which gives a front page ‘thumb’s up’ to Paul ‘You Can Never Give Enough Tax Cuts To The Wealthy To Save America’ Ryan as re-energising Romney’s campaign
… while running, along with Sheridan, a piece from the States – Ryan’s nomination is a dud!
Looks like Greg Sheridan has written his last piece for Murdoch doesn’t it.
You all sound like a bunch of yanks. What’s wrong the domestic front too boaring. Go Rudd Go!
Maybe you are confusedly thinking about the Deputy Premier of Victoria Peter Ryan, Shad. This article is about Paul Ryan.
I agree with you though Rudd should go, well said, see it wasn’t hard.
Rudd had some complimentary things to say about Bowen today. No mention of Julia Go Rudd Go – Julia Going Going Gone