The GOP’s WATBs: ‘Leave Paul Ryan Alone!’

Posted by AzblueMeanie:

How could I not post this in response to this headline? Will sombebody please make the spoof video? GOP to Newt: Leave Paul Ryan Alone!

The melee ignited by Newt Gingrich's condemnation of the House GOP budget as "right-wing social engineering" is intensifying as Republican leaders, conservative editorial pages, and right-leaning pundits join together to condemn his remarks.

[The GOP's WATBs: Leave Paul Ryan alone!]

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told WLS radio in Chicago, according to The Hill, "Just to sit here while all but three House Republicans voted for the Ryan budget, to somehow portray that as a radical step, I believe, is a tremendous misspeak."

Actually, Newt occasionally unconsciously blurts out an obvious truth. This is one of those occasions.

Rep. Paul Ryan's Roadmap to America's Ruin and the Tea-Publican vote to end Medicare as we know it has met with fierce opposition from constituents back home during town halls. It was approaching the level of faux outrage generated by the Koch brothers' corporate Tea Party front groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks during the 2009 town halls over health care reform, only this outrage was genuine, grassroots and organic.

Sen. Harry Reid should force Senate Republicans to walk the plank and to vote on Rep. Paul Ryan's Roadmap to America's Ruin before the Memorial Day break so we can see some more town hall outrage.

The thin-skinned Rep. Paul Ryan lit into Newt Gingrich as well. "With allies like that, who needs the left?" he told radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday. You gotta love it when these lunatics turn on one another.

Dick Armey, who had a legendarily tempestuous relationship with Gingrich when they were in the House leadership together and is now a Tea Party organizer [he is the titular head of FreedomWorks], told Politico that Newt was "confused and conflicted" on policy.

"We always say: Newt always has so many great ideas," Armey said. "Well yeah, but then he shifts between them at such a rate it's pretty hard to track it let alone keep up with it."

The conservative press wasn't any kinder, as contributors to the National Review and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal unloaded on the former Speaker in a piece entitled "Gingrich to House GOP: Drop Dead."

"The episode reveals the Georgian's weakness as a candidate, and especially as a potential President — to wit, his odd combination of partisan, divisive rhetoric and poll-driven policy timidity," they wrote.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer told FOX News Gingrich's remarks were a "capital offense" that ruled out any chance of winning the nomination. "This is a big deal," he said. "He's done."

Gingrich, for his part, has sought to walk back his comments a bit. But on the basic point — that the Ryan budget is "too big a jump" — he has stuck to his guns.

Let the right-wing self-destruction begin! It couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.

BONUS: Hey retirees on social security and Medicare, the GOP's boy wonder, Rep. Paul Ryan, says you are the new "welfare queens" to be stigmatized and despised by the right-wing. Ryan Defends Medicare Privatization As Strengthening 'Welfare For Those Who Need It' :

Speaking in broad terms Monday before the Economic Club of Chicago, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended his controversial proposals to slash entitlement spending and privatize Medicare.

Ryan avoided describing his health care plans in specific detail, eschewing even the friendly terms he and other Republicans have used to explain it since he first unveiled it earlier this year. Instead, Ryan reframed the entitlement cuts in his budget as "strengthen[ing] welfare for those who need it."

Maybe you should contact the boy wonder's congressional office and remind him that you paid payroll deduction taxes for years while you were working to pay for social security and Medicare benefits. Ain't no welfare involved, you earned it.

The House budget would phase out the existing Medicare program and replace it with a new program to provide future retirees with private insurance subsidies (coupons), which would shrink in value over time relative to steeply rising health care costs, leaving seniors at risk of lack of health-care coverage.

This Randian bedwetter is a true-believer in the "invisible hand" of the free market solves everything:

"If I could sum up that disagreement in a couple of sentences, I would say this: Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers. Their plan is to give government the power to deny care to seniors," he said, according to prepared remarks.

Ryan's remarks come as vulnerable Republicans, and Republican presidential candidates, grapple with his plan's unpopularity.