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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Now I try hard not to become hysterical

Now I try hard not to become hysterical

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So the right-center establishment consensus on Ryan is that “hey, you might not like the details, but at LEAST HE HAS A PLAN”. Remember the last time we were told that there was a big threat and that we should support an ill-planned audacious role of the dice to deal with it?

With Iraq, we were told that there was a great national debate about taking the country to war or some bullshit like that. We’re being told that now about vouchercare. Greg Sargent absolutely nails it:

Ever since Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, it’s been widely claimed that this ensures a “great debate” pitting two starkly different ideological visions over the future against one another. But it’s now clear that the GOP ticket doesn’t want a great debate at all. Their entire strategy is designed to obscure the true ideological differences between both sides.

[….]

How on earth is this a great debate? It’s actually an effort to avoid one. Anyone who continues to grant Romney and Ryan the presumption of being serious about engaging in a great clash of visions is only helping them avoid accountability for the true nature of their actual vision.

I still think Ryan was a bad pick because any discussion of vouchercare — no matter how inane and propagandist — is likely to help Democrats, especially when the other option is talking about the economy. An “honest debate” would make Ryan’s policies even more politically toxic. But there will be none, of course, and Republicans counted on that with this the same as they counted on that with Iraq and all the others.

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    Steve

    I almost crack up laughing when they say “What’s Obama’s plan to save Medicare?” Uh, guys, Obama does in fact have a plan. It’s called the Affordable Care Act, and it’s already the law of the land. The fact that you go around demagoguing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!

  2. 2.

    Scott

    And the media, as usual, is complicit in the whole thing, by refusing to point out the obvious flaws in the Republican plan.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    Who actually says, these days, that Ryan has a plan? The Villagers all agree that the underclasses need to suffer, and sooner rather than later– but there’s a grudging awareness that Ryan’s ‘plan’ is simply nonsense. And, worse, Ryan actively worked to torpedo Simpson-Bowles.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    Speaking of great debates, wow:

    The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Show Me State finds McCaskill earning 48% support to Akin’s 38%. Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

    And let’s emphasize that this is from GOP house pollster Rasmussen.

  5. 5.

    jwb

    @dmsilev: Well, yes, of course it’s Rasmussen, who, if you believe his polls are driven by political bias, in this case presumably wants to show things are as bad as possible for Akin in order to force him out.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @jwb: Fair point. Of course, if Akin stays the course, polls like this could end up being a self-fufilling prophecy.

    So sad.

  7. 7.

    JCT

    Whoa, Dougj — GREAT song from that album. Holy crap.

    Ryan’s “plan” is to bat those baby blues and say Obama is a big blah meanie. All the way to Nov.

  8. 8.

    Some Loser

    Ryan is just as fake as Romney. I wonder who can flip and flop faster: Romney or Ryan? Doesn’t matter I hope they burn in hell for their treachery. America, for all of fault, don’t deserve this. Couldn’t the GOP have wrangled some better liars and cheats? That last one, Dubya, was decent enough.

  9. 9.

    Steve

    @dmsilev: That’s nice to see. I have friends from Missouri who are among the wingnuttiest of the wingnutty. I’m confident they never considered changing their vote for even a moment. It’s nice to think that they may not be representative!

  10. 10.

    Cacti

    There will be 3 POTUS debates and 1 VPOTUS. I look forward to the second one especially. Biden won’t have to pull his punches to avoid “beating up on a girl” this time.

    This will be the time for O’Biden to make R/R defend or disavow their lunacy.

  11. 11.

    jwb

    @dmsilev: I think the polls are headed in this direction (Rasmussen may even have simply gone honest on it if there was no need for the thumb), but it will still require McCaskill to run an effective campaign, and so far I’ve seen little evidence that she has that capability. I’m not even talking about the blue dog thing, which is irritating but not fatal; it might even be necessary. I’m talking about the basic ability to make political points and come across as an effective politician.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Two Brilliant Mistake reference in as many days? Or did the Bobo discussion put it in your mind?

    @MattF: I really have never understood the obsession with making some people suffer. Why not work to ameliorate suffering?

  14. 14.

    cscheer

    Um, the entire liberal establishment rolled over on Iraq like a labrador wanting its belly scratched, THAT’s why there was no great debate.

  15. 15.

    WereBear

    I love the fact that it seems the bubbling pot of Teabagger resentment is actually scorching Mitt’s mitts, so to speak.

    They don’t want to do dog whistles and code words any more. They want to let America know exactly what they stand for, and exactly what their dreams are, and exactly what this country is going to look like when they get put in charge!

    And I say, let them.

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Why not work to ameliorate suffering?

    But then how do you feel above your moral inferiors? We are talking about rather delicate feelings of the upper crust here after all.

  17. 17.

    jwb

    @Some Loser: Ryan is, however, a much better politician, and that extends beyond his bright blue eyes that make pundits like Brooks see starbursts. Romney is a horrible politician; Ryan is not. And we’d all be wise not to ignore the difference.

  18. 18.

    Alex S.

    Why did they pick Ryan if they don’t want this debate? They could have taken some broad-shoulders-plains-guy like John Thune. The simplest answer is that they didn’t realize how unpopular Ryan’s views were when they chose him…

  19. 19.

    hep kitty

    Plan? What plan? He says he hasn’t “run the numbers”

    This guy has done nothing but dance around his record.

    So, just say you have a plan and it’s all good, it’s IOKIYAR.

  20. 20.

    Steeplejack

    __

    So the right-center establishment consensus on Ryan is that “Hey, you might not like the details, but at least he has a plan.”

    But there’s not even a plan there! It’s more like a skeletal outline for a PowerPoint presentation with place-markers to drop in the substance later–which will never come.

    Krugman, “What’s in the Ryan Plan?”:

    In the first decade, the big things are (i) conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, with much lower funding than projected under current law, and (ii) sharp cuts in top tax rates and corporate taxes.
    __
    Is this a deficit-reduction program? Not on the face of it: it’s basically a tradeoff of reduced aid to the poor for reduced taxes on the rich, with the net effect of the specific proposals being to increase, not reduce, the deficit. Yet Ryan claims a big deficit reduction, via two big “magic asterisks.” First, he insists that the tax cuts won’t reduce revenue, because they’ll be offset with unspecified “base-broadening.” [.  .  .]
    __
    Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center calls these unspecified sources of revenue “mystery meat,” and strongly suggests that nothing like this would actually happen.
    __
    Second, there are large assumed cuts in discretionary spending relative to current policy—again, CBO [Congressional Budget Office]:

    That combination of other mandatory and discretionary spending was specified to decline from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2021 and then move in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in 2022, which would generate a further decline relative to GDP. No proposals were specified that would generate that path.

    So, whenever you hear people talking about Ryan’s deficit reductions, bear in mind that over the first decade all of the alleged deficit reduction comes from revenue and spending numbers that are simply asserted, not the result of any policies actually described in the “plan.”
    __
    After the first decade, Medicare is gradually transformed into a voucher scheme, with the value of the vouchers lagging well behind projected health care costs. Even so, however, much of the supposed deficit reduction comes not from Medicare but from further cuts in discretionary spending relative to GDP, with the number eventually falling to 3.5 percent of GDP. There is, once again, no specification of how this is to be accomplished; bear in mind that this number includes defense, which is currently around 4 percent of GDP.
    __
    Is this a plan?
    __
    Ryan basically proposes three big things: slashing Medicaid, cutting taxes on corporations and high-income people, and replacing Medicare with a drastically less well funded voucher system. These concrete proposals would, taken together, actually increase the deficit for the first decade and beyond.
    __
    All the claims of major deficit reduction therefore rest on the magic asterisks. In that sense, this isn’t even a plan, it’s just a set of assertions.

  22. 22.

    ExurbanMom

    Next line of the song is so appropriate:

    Now I try hard not to become hysterical/
    But I’m not sure if I’m laughing or crying.

    Because when I read this crazy shit, that’s certainly how I feel…

  23. 23.

    Brachiator

    I still think Ryan was a bad pick because any discussion of vouchercare—no matter how inane and propagandist—is likely to help Democrats, especially when the other option is talking about the economy.

    Does it really matter? Is there such a thing as a good Republican VP pick?

    McCain had a secret plan for dealing with Iraq. Romney has a secret plan, in the same vault with his tax returns, for dealing with the economy, including Social Security and Medicare. And to the extent that Romney has ever talked about Medicare, he has backed Ryan’s proposals.

    So while Ryan’s selection may put the issue into sharper focus, it’s not as though people don’t know where the Republicans stand on this, unless they want to be willfully ignorant.

  24. 24.

    jwb

    @Alex S.: No, I think they knew perfectly well that his views were unpopular. I think they just think that they can lie about it through the election, the media won’t call them on it, and then after the election they can turn around, enact Ryan’s plan and say “everybody knew what we were going to do.” At this point, the media seems unsure whether they will call them on it, and I’m unsure whether Obama has enough money in the bank to do it for them.

  25. 25.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    “hey, you might not like the details, but at LEAST HE HAS A PLAN”.

    “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”

    — Walter Sobchak

  26. 26.

    amk

    Muhlenberg Poll in Pennsylvania

    The first poll of Pennsylvania voters since Mitt Romney made Paul Ryan his running mate found the pick did nothing to move the race.

    President Barack Obama maintains his lead in the lean-blue state with 49 percent support to Romney’s 40 percent among likely voters, according to a The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll conducted this week.

    Notably, Obama maintains his lead despite weak job approval — 47 percent of voters disapprove of the job he’s doing in the White House, compared to 43 percent who do.

  28. 28.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Alex S.:

    Why did they pick Ryan if they don’t want this debate? They could have taken some broad-shoulders-plains-guy like John Thune. The simplest answer is that they didn’t realize how unpopular Ryan’s views were when they chose him…

    Wasn’t Ryan one of the GOP leading lights that was supposed to school Obama in Baltimore for being uppity in 2009 and ended up making a fool of himself?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012902401.html

  30. 30.

    joel hanes

    I remember
    I have a plan for Peace With Honor[TM}: a peace plan which must remain secret until after I am elected President — R.M. Nixon (paraphrased)

    The secret ingredient was bombs. Lots of bombs.

  31. 31.

    roc

    “at LEAST HE HAS A PLAN”

    I think the most disingenuous part of all this talk about Ryan is conceding to call his hand-waving *a plan*. It is, at best, vague goals and ambitions. “Seriousness” is an evaluation of how well specifics have been considered in context of reality. But without specifics *you simply do not have a plan* and seriousness is right out.

    Ryan’s nonsense is akin to my saying “By 2025 my earnings will have gone from $50k to $150k and my spending from $30k to $15k. So if I cut spending on the kids by $200/mo I can start giving $250/mo to my rich cousin and we’ll still have a surplus of well over $100k” Who in their right mind would call that “a plan”?

    The offered specifics are *laughably* insignificant compared to the goals and ambitions. And taken on their own, they’re not even a net step in the indicated direction!

    That is not a plan, let alone a serious one.

  32. 32.

    Maude

    When I hear pundits or reporters talk about horse race, their voices change. They get all tingly.
    Repub want to lay down the law, not debate with the less thans.

  33. 33.

    Sad_Dem

    The Republicans may refer to Reagan all the time, but why no love for Richard Nixon, who got elected on “I have a plan to get us out of Vietnam. I can’t tell you what it is, but if you elect me I’ll carry it out.” Let me repeat the “he got elected” part.

  34. 34.

    Rafer Janders

    So the right-center establishment consensus on Ryan is that “hey, you might not like the details, but at LEAST HE HAS A PLAN”.

    You know who else had a plan…?

  36. 36.

    Valdivia

    I am very glad you frontpaged this Doug I still think if more pundits saw this as the true frame of what is going on Romney would get called out for lying more often. But I am dreaming I guess.

  44. 44.

    dance around in your bones

    WTF, tried to submit a comment 3 times (not all at the same time) and I just get ‘server timed out’

    Fuck it, the comment wasn’t that great anyway. Y’all are spared my pithy yet so incredibly insightful remarks.

    Ha.

  45. 45.

    El Cid

    How would people look at it if NASA’s “plan” for getting Curiosity to Mars and landing it was as shitty, vacuous, contradictory, and dishonest as Ryan’s so-called “plan”?

    If NASA budgeted fuel in terms of “somehow collect more fuel from somewhere as it gets close to Mars”, or projected landing deceleration by “have new computer programs which somehow make it slow down the descent”, or entire chapters containing nothing but declarations on how we have to be bold.

    And then whatever numbers NASA did include meant the opposite of what they were supposed to describe, like, its total cost when added up separately even as written added up to 10 times the amount that the document’s introduction said was the total, what?

    “It’s a serious plan?”

    “At least NASA is bold and daring and addressing the topic of getting a rover to Mars seriously?”

  46. 46.

    dance around in your bones

    Oh My Fucking Spaghetti Monster.

    I swear I did NOT touch the Submit button more than once with my noodley appendage…..I just kept getting a ‘time-out’ from the server.

    Not that my comment was very interesting or anything.

    Bug! Bug! Bug!

  47. 47.

    dance around in your bones

    DougJ, could you please delete my extraneous remarks so I don’t look like such an idiota ?

    Gracias, Danke velle, Tasha kor and all that thank you stuff.

  48. 48.

    dance around in your bones

    Ya know what? Thanks fer nuttin.

    I know, MY fault? I swear to gawd this multiple posting thing has become MUCH more prevalent since the last ‘site upgrade’.

    This is NOT snark.

    ETA: P.S. – I love you.

  49. 49.

    mclaren

    Their entire strategy is designed to obscure the true ideological differences between both sides lie about the economic and social atrocities Republicans want to perpetrate against the American people, including starving children and starving old men and women, letting pregnant women die if abortions could save their lives, and torturing and murdering millions of noncombatant women and children in foreign countries.

    Fixed that for you.

    We really ought to be clear about what Republicans want in 2012. They don’t want “smaller government” or “deficit reduction” or any of those euphemisms or weasel words.

    In 2012, the Republican platform is to kill American children and starve old people to death in order to get money to fund the murder of women and children in third world countries.

    The Republican platform in 2012 is essentially the same as that of Reinhard Heydrich in occupied France in 1942, except that the Republicans want to torture and starve and enslave and murder Americans rather than Jews.

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