Paul Ryan is the Man

Well it had to happen quickly and it did. Mitt Romney's numbers were sliding and the far right was more than grumbling. So now we have his choice for a running mate. It is congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a seven term pro who has specific ideas on the budget, or rather what should be removed from the budget.

The good news for Mitt is that he is from a swing state and Mitt desperately needs swing states. If he can steal Ryan's Wisconsin, Colorado where he leads right now and maybe Michigan which is his defacto home state, Sheldon Addelson can make plans to take up permanent residence in the Lincoln bedroom. The Koch brothers in Wichita will be dancing in the street. Rush Limbaugh will be doing to jelly belly live on Pennsylvania Avenue.

All that being said, make no mistake about it, this was also a move to the tea party right and possibly a shift in focus for the campaign. Paul Ryan is going to howl long and hard about the deficit. He is going to pound on it daily. Lets face it, the economy thing just isn't working for Mr. Romney. After all it was his party who got us into the mess in the first place and now, nearly four years into the Obama administration the recovery has been slow, but it has been progressing at a steady pace. What Obama can't deny is the that the deficit is the elephant in the living room.

Mr. Ryan has some plans in regard to reducing the spending. One is to privatize social security another is to eliminate medicare for everyone born after 1975. He wants to replace it with fixed sum vouchers that will allow people to buy private insurance. That is, of course, if the insurance companies will accept them. There will still be that pesky old pre existing conditions thing and since there is no place in the Ryan plan to adjust the  amount of  the vouchers as the cost of medical care goes up things could get dicey when it comes paying for that liver transplant a few years down the line.

Being a republican Mr. Ryan also advocates the elimination of corporate income taxes, the estate tax, capital gains taxes, and taxes on dividends and interest. In other words he believes he can have the best of both worlds. As the big boys pay trillions less the deficit will magically go away. One suspects that to accomplish this deft economic turn around the middle and lower income groups are going to get screwed, glued, and tattooed. However such things have never concerned people such as Paul Ryan. They know who pays for the campaign signs and TV spots and it isn't the middle and lower classes.

So there we have it. Mitt has his man. He has no foreign policy experience whatsoever, meaning that neither of them do, but the electorate doesn't seem to care about that. In fact, the average American voter apparently doesn't give a rat's ass about diplomacy, or even if a candidate has a rudimentary knowledge of world geography. The middle east? Why it is in the middle of....the east, I guess. Besides, as long as we have bombs and the planes to deliver them we have a viable foreign policy.

Look for a bump in Romney's numbers. For the first time in a week republicans have something to get excited about.

The train, ladies and gentlemen, has just pulled out of the station. Brace yourselves for the ride.

8-11-12