Will Ryan sabotage the GOP's congressional hopes?

Politico:

[T]he more pessimistic [Republican] strategists don’t even feign good cheer: They think the Ryan pick is a disaster for the GOP. Many ... are worried that Ryan’s vocal views about overhauling Medicare will be a millstone for other GOP candidates in critical House and Senate races.

That, however, is where Citizens United comes in--a worry on this side that should allay the worry on their side. In the few competitive districts remaining (GOP state legislatures have successfully converted many more two-year seats to at-will appointments) swing voters will be swamped by Koch and Adelson and Rove all bellowing that the GOP candidate just adores Medicare all to pieces. Wouldn't touch its sacred obligations for the world. It's an everlasting monument to a prudent society and adorable grandma, both of which the GOP pants to preserve.

Underfunded Democratic candidates will have difficulty--pardon the understatement--countering the spineless hypocrisy and bloody onslaught. In some cases there won't even be any airtime for Dems to buy; Koch-Adelson-Rove will have gobbled up every minute of it. That leaves the coattail effect and partisan enthusiasm and the ground game--all of which are far more precarious than a shitload of money and oodles of airtime.

I remain confident that a major realignment is on its way, which will compel an equally major GOP transformation; this, however, will take some time. But it will come, beginning with a decisive Obama victory. Only later--again, when, precisely, no one can know--will Congress join Western civilization and discover the 21st century.

For that reason, I pity President Obama and his second term. Imbeciles. He'll have little but imbeciles to play with.

The upside? There's always a good chance I'm dead wrong--that my fears have conquered objective judgment--about the congressional stuff.

Comments

[Peter G]

I do not think you are dead wrong. On the contrary. I do not look for much progress for the first half of Obama's second term. If the Democrats have a majority in the Senate,(control is an illusion), then they will be able to fend off the more noxious assaults by the Republicans and of course, be prepared for any SCOTUS appointments. Who knows, by the next mid term elections, the American voting public may have had enough and restore some sort of functionality to the government of the United States.

[japa21]

Yeah, I think you are dead wrong. The Obama campaign is really making Ryan/Romney so toxic, and tying them to the Republican agenda so well, that even the Koch/Adelson/Rove triumverate can't save them.

Plus, that CU money is now going to have to be spread even thinner as more and more Congressional seats they probably thought were safe GOP come into play.

I think there will be a lot less spent on say, Joe Walsh, than initially projected. They are probably ready to consider him a lost cause.

And they may not even be able to figure out which districts need their push until middle of October, by which it may be too late.

[Robert Lipscomb]

There is a fundamental flaw in all discussions about the "Ryan pan". It is not Ryan's plan. Ryan did not lock himself in a secreted hideaway in Wisconsin and draw up a budget, much less issue it to the public as a pamphlet.

No,he, a few GOP congressmen and a Viking hoarde of staff members drew up the proposed budget in consultation with various GOP congressmen, party leaders, think tank gurus and lobbyists, they brought it to the floor for a vote.

And vote for it they did - almost unanimously. As I recall, one asian congressman did not and was almost lynched. Then, they sent it to the senate where Leader Harry Reid was kind enough to allow everyone vote on the House budget - and vote they did. Again, the GOP senators voted for it unanimopusly or nearly unanimously. because of the obstructionist Democrats, it did not pass.

Then, we all waited for the House to find a way to un-pass the legislaion. We waited and waited for about a year. Then by God, Ryan and his GOP team edited it, and it was re-passed it - again nearly unanimously. The senate - ditto.

So, you see it is a lie to call it "the Ryan plan". It is "The By-God Republican Plan". For this reason, neither Romney nor Ryan nore any elected Republican in D.C. can disown this plan.

The D.C. GOP is a little bit pregnant with the plan.

Please, let's give this child the name it deserves; The Reublican Plan, not the Ryan Plan.

[nathkatun7]

Robert Lipscomb, you are absolutely spot-on in properly calling the so called Ryan Plan the "Republican Plan." The overwhelming Republicans members of Congres, in both the House and the Senate, voted for it. And, if I remember correctly, all Republican presidential candidates endorsed it--including Newt Gingrich who had initially criticized it as a right wing social engineering.