Calling Mitt Romney “a candidate of no details” in its first paragraph, Sunday’s New York Times’ lead editorial was posted over at the paper’s website in the past hour.
“Mr. Ryan’s Cramped Vision,” eviscerates Romney for his veep choice, essentially telling readers that if voters had any question that Romney was, indeed, the wealthy, cold-hearted, ruthless businessman that doesn’t give a flying f*ck about the 99%--as he’s already portrayed by many in the Democratic Party--this morning’s choice of Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running-mate does barely little more than confirm that greater truth.
But, as the NYT’s editors also remind us, by choosing Ryan for the number two slot on his ticket, at least the GOP presidential candidate now has plenty of details to verify the true extent of his draconian “callousness.”
Mr. Ryan’s Cramped Vision
Editorial
New York Times
August 12, 2012
Mitt Romney’s safe and squishy campaign just took on a much harder edge. …Voters will now be able to see with painful clarity just what the Republican Party has in store for them.
As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan has drawn a blueprint of a government that will be absent when people need it the most. It will not be there when the unemployed need job training, or when a struggling student needs help to get into college. It will not be there when a miner needs more than a hardhat for protection, or when a city is unable to replace a crumbling bridge.
And it will be silent when the elderly cannot keep up with the costs of M.R.I.’s or prescription medicines, or when the poor and uninsured become increasingly sick through lack of preventive care.
More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan, and eagerly accepted by the Tea-Party-driven House, come from programs for low-income Americans. That means billions of dollars lost for job training for the displaced, Pell grants for students and food stamps for the hungry. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops raised their voices in protest at the shredding of the nation’s moral obligations.
Mr. Ryan’s budget “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment,” the bishops wrote in an April letter to the House. “These cuts are unjustified and wrong…”
I have left out much of the NY Times’ brutal takedown of Romney’s choice of Ryan to join him on the GOP ticket. It is
extremely powerful stuff! For more on that you’ll have to read it for yourself:
RIGHT HERE.
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UPDATE: Paul Krugman on the Ryan announcement, around 3:45PM via his blog...
…he is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn’t care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest. Of course, this means that he’ll fit in to the Romney campaign just fine.
As I said, I have no idea how this will play politically. But it does look like a move from weakness, rather than strength; Romney obviously felt he needed a VP who will get people to stop talking about him.
For more re: Krugman on Ryan, checkout Kossack
Vyan's post.