Shifty: NY Times Tries To Change Debate From Obama's Economy To Ryan's Record

by Tony Lee 

The New York Times misses the point that Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate further highlights Obama’s failures -- on the economy, on the debt, on bipartisanship, and on the budget. 

Instead, the Times, right out of the gate, has written that Ryan’s selection will allow Obama to make this election a referendum on Ryan’s plan, and Obama will now be on “more promising territory” and have “a chance to press the offensive against his challengers rather than just defend his record.”

What the Times is doing is setting the conventional wisdom -- that this election will now be a referendum on Ryan and not on Obama’s miserable record -- in an effort to change the political conversation and debate so the mainstream media pack of dogs focuses even less than they currently do on all of Obama’s failures. 

The Times quotes one liberal group after another saying the Romney-Ryan ticket would essentially throw the proverbial granny off the cliff. Here is a sampling.

The leader of the AFL-CIO’S super PAC: “This is the perfect choice for us to finish our frame of Romney ... What Romney and Bain did to working families and companies is what Romney and Ryan would do to all Americans.”

Bill Burton, the founder of the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA that ran a reprehensible and despicable ad that accused Romney of killing a former employee’s wife who died of cancer because she did not have health care: “From the beginning when we polled, we found that the Ryan plan was the most toxic political document ever, but the problem was you couldn’t convince voters that any politician would actually support it ... Now this actually makes the job easier.”

What the Times conveniently fails to note is Ryan is someone who highlights all of Obama’s failures and should make the election even more of a referendum on Obama than Ryan. 

From the very beginning, Ryan challenged Obama on his budget and Obamacare. As the Times even notes, Obama referred to Ryan as someone who was “absolutely sincere about wanting to reduce the deficit,” and gave “him credit for at least being willing to put out there some tough choices.” 

But Obama's actions, especially concerning Ryan, have proven Obama to be insincere and unserious about working with Republicans to reduce the debt. 

Obama -- and his Democrats in the Senate -- has not found common ground on a budget for over 1000 days. Obama has recklessly spent the country’s money on programs such as Obamacare and green boondoggles like Solyndra. He promised the country his stimulus program would reduce the unemployment rate to below 6 percent and the $50 billion taxpayer bailout of GM would prove profitable to taxpayers who never wanted their monies spent bailing out failed companies. Both have been false promises.

Further, Ryan is a symbol of how Obama has become one of the divisive presidents in history. Unable and unwilling to have an honest debate with Ryan, Obama invited Ryan to a speech at George Washington University, gave him a front row seat, and spent the whole speech falsely obliterating Ryan’s budget. If it had been basketball, Obama may have received a technical foul for taunting. But the moment showed Obama's true colors as the Chicago politician he has always been. 

Then, the Times tries to set the stage for Democrats to run more “Granny” ads, quoting people -- without any facts -- that seniors, who have been going away from Obama -- will be repelled by Ryan, especially in Florida:

Stanley B. Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said that surveys showed attacks on the Ryan plan moved voters dramatically, adding that Mr. Romney could no longer dance around it. “There is no longer a nuance to that debate,” he said. “There are a lot of white, working-class voters, particularly older ones, who will walk away now, even if tempted earlier by the slow economy.”

When the Ryan budget plan was polled in 2011, more seniors actually preferred Ryan's plan than Obama’s, but this is an inconvenient fact for the mainstream media. 

The mainstream media knows Obama is losing the argument on the economy, and Romney's selection of Ryan is another chance for them to attempt to change the subject and the debate, which will be a lot tougher for them to do in the new media age.