By monkeyz_uncle
Mitt Romney announced his Vice Presidential running mate and the country responded with a resounding ‘meh.’ Paul Ryan was a safe and somewhat obvious choice; coming from Wisconsin, a swing state that voted for Obama in 2008, as well as his national recognition as a fiscal hawk due to his budget plan that dares to try to invoke entitlement reforms upon that ominous third rail of American politics: welfare and social programs.
While Paul Ryan is touted as the face of an administration that will tackle our deficit problem, however, he is also a Republican that voted for many of the measures that ballooned our deficit, and even gave an impassioned speech urging his fellow representatives to vote for the TARP relief.
Paul Ryan is supposed to be a big deficit cutter, but he refuses to cut so much as a penny from defense, of which I’m sure that there is plenty of room for cuts, seeing as the U.S. spends more on defense than just about the rest of the world combined.
As far as the military goes, Paul Ryan seems to be the rebirth of the neoconservative for the next generation of politics. Paul Ryan voted for the NDAA with its elimination of American’s rights to due process, and Ryan falls into lockstep with the leaders of the GOP on issues of foreign intervention, domestic surveillance, and the like.
Paul Ryan is an indication that the statist, neoconservative core of the Republican party is confident in their power and do not fear losing conservative and tea party votes because they have guessed (and rightly so by my estimation) that Americans would rather take their chances with a centrist Republican than Obama, so the GOP need not reach out to a tea party or libertarian darling.
But will a Romney Ryan ticket be much better than Obama? Yes, but only slightly. Romney Ryan is going to be a continuation of the corporatism dominating our political realm for decades (Ryan was one of only 20 Republicans on board for TARP bailouts) and I assume under Romney Ryan we would still see a decent amount of Keynesian economics taking place (to the benefit of banks and corporations of course), but nowhere near Obama’s.
Obama came out recently calling for more stimulus “across the board” for our businesses (because the last one was such a huge success right?). Want to know what this looks like to me? Campaign fundraising. http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/1338361
It’s Obama saying hey if I get elected there’s a stimulus coming. Want to get a piece of that stimulus? Well let’s see who makes a campaign contribution…
If Obama really wants to help the average everyday person (which is the ultimate goal of the stimulus right? To make the economy better for you and me) why doesn’t he just give that stimulus money directly to the PEOPLE.
I’d rather our government not give away our tax money to anybody, but if we’re giving it away to stimulate the economy, might as well give it to who it’s supposed to benefit in the first place.
I’m sure if you give every citizen a thousand dollars, they’d spend it to stimulate the economy indeed.
