An Exercise In Mendacity

That could be a description of the convention, the Republican Party, Ryan, Romney, Ayn Romney, Chris Christie, Huckabee, coverage of the convention... People try to engage me in a discussion of the Tampa Hate Fest and they're shocked when I tell them I didn't turn the TV on once. I heard some of the radio, saw bits in news coverage and lived it in real time on my twitter feed. But watch it? I've heard all their lies before... why bother? A journo I follow on Twitter, Dave Weigel summed up Ryan's speech more succinctly than anyone:

Most of the millions of people who watched the speech on television tonight do not read fact-checks or obsessively consume news 15 hours a day, and will never know how much Ryan's case against Obama relied on lies and deception. Ryan's pants are on fire, but all America saw was a barn-burner.

In terms of the depth of Ryan's studied deception-- well, everyone has taken a hand at it. Andrew Sullivan, like most people, tried reason: "If you ignore the details, and wipe your memory like an Etch-A-Sketch, it can sound like a wonderful return to fiscal responsibility. But slashing more taxes for the very wealthy, boosting defense spending, keeping Medicare intact for the current elderly, and gutting Obamacare's savings is a return to supply side fantasy, not a serious alternative to getting us back to fiscal sanity." The editorial board of the Washington Post condemned the speech as "misleading" and a Post columnist, Jonathan Bernstein dismissed the whole thing as "a staggering, staggering lie" ... "lazy mendacity, incredibly lazy mendacity." Within an hour of his having finished delivering it to his adoring fans, it was torn apart, lie by lie, on TPM by Brian Beutler, Top 5 Fibs In Paul Ryan's Convention Speech. And, as you would expect, Steve Benen did an excellent job demonstrating how Ryan's speech was merely an "endless string of lies... packaged well and presented with conviction." Wisconsin papers and even FOX News (!!) were all remarking this morning how Ryan's whole shtik is built on a tissue of outright lies and deception. Fox: "[T]o 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."

But everyone-- sorry-- seems to agree that it was Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic who did the best job with Ryan: The Most Dishonest Convention Speech... Ever? Not sure why he decided to end it with a question mark. He's uninterested in how the speech played out, just how Ryan was "so brazenly willing to twist the truth." Perhaps he's new to Ryan-watching? Wall Street created him for just such an endeavor.

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.

It’s true: The plant shut down. But it shut down in 2008-- before Obama became president.
 
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.

Democrats are hopeful that Ryan's presence on the ticket will help galvanize self-interested voters to rise up on election day and banish the GOP from control of Congress, primarily because he wants to abolish Medicare and Medicaid (and, let's be honest, Social Security as well). Pollsters report that Ryan's Medicare position isn't harming Romney yet but that "down the ticket, Medicare attacks are taking a serious toll on Republicans." And they point to red-leaning districts where Democrats are picking up momentum, mostly helping ConservaDems like Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Jerry McNerney (D-CA), and Gary McDowell (Blue Dog-MI). Maybe. But I was privy to some private polling that shows that even voters who disagree with every stand Ryan takes, still like him and are still willing to vote for him! I'm thinking someone might have shown Aaron Blake the same polling, although what he wrote about in his column was public polls.

A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll asked Americans to say what one word comes to mind when they think about the GOP vice presidential nominee. And people have a hard time finding negative things to say about him.

None of the top nine words people use to describe Ryan are negative, and six of the nine are positive (“intelligent,” “good,” “energetic,” “honest,” etc.).

Not until you get to the 10th- and 11th-most-cited words do Democrats’ attempts to define Ryan begin to register. That’s the point at which people start describing Ryan as an “idiot” and “extremist.”

And of the top 27 most-cited words, twice as many are positive-- 16-- as negative-- eight.

All of this from a guy who starts out with positive marks, though not overwhelmingly so. In fact, the positive words used to describe Ryan suggest a politician whose favorable rating is far better than it currently is.

In other words, it seems clear that many people have processed positive GOP messages about his intellect and his life story.

More than anything, though, it shows that Democratic attacks have yet to really sink in. Respondents actually offered nearly as many negative words as positive words, but the negative reviews are far more diffuse. Most negative words were only mentioned a handful of times, with little consensus on what’s bad about Ryan.

If Democrats’ efforts to label Ryan as an extremist who wants to end Medicare were really catching on, we would be seeing “extreme” and “Medicare” up higher. (In fact, “Medicare” wasn’t even mentioned.)

On the other hand, my masseuse watched the proceedings the way someone would watch an Emmy Awards show, spotting celebrities, commenting on clothes... "I saw that Condi from Bush," she told me as I was trying to doze off while she did my feet. My old boss-- I'm reluctant to name him-- but people who know, will know-- called and left a message while I was out for dinner. "What state, a southern state I think, was that Attorney General from, the one with the woman from Florida? Where was he from? I missed it. But what a queen! His mouth looked like it would be good for a blowjob." He was talking about Sam Olens of Georgia. I guess that's as good a way to watch a convention as any other-- and as enlightening.