Paul Ryan: Hope or Hindrance?

From the mixed up articles of Ms. Kirsten Powers.  She can't seem to make up her mind.

From the hindrance side of things.  Excerpt:

If you are Mitt Romney, how do you spell disaster? Paul Ryan.



The Republican presidential candidate announced Saturday morning that Wisconsin House Member and GOP folk hero Paul Ryan will be his running mate. The chorus of cheers you heard wasn’t just from Paul’s throng of conservative fans; there surely was plenty of high-fiving at the White House and Obama election headquarters, too. Members of the Obama camp learned from the Palin announcement to remain publicly circumspect, but they are thrilled.

As they should be. Romney has all but put a neon sign above his campaign headquarters saying, “We are terrified.” There is no other reason for Mr. Play-it-Safe to take such a risk, unless the campaign was desperate...

From now on, the Obama campaign’s work is pretty much done for them. Remember that in addition to his draconian budget reduction plan, Ryan also was behind the House bill to privatize Social Security, a plan the Bush administration ran from once officials saw how politically toxic it was. Now, Romney is going to be facing down a mob of angry senior citizens in Florida demanding to know if he supports Ryan’s various schemes. And that’s before the super PACs firebomb the Sunshine State with negative advertising...

So long, Mitt. We hardly knew ye.

From an earlier article on one of the many budget battles in Congress in the past three years. Excerpts:

On Friday, we were forced to endure a day of debate on the Paul Ryan budget, which everyone knows is dead on arrival in the Senate. The centerpiece of the congressman's grand plan—turning Medicare into a voucher program—is opposed by the majority of the population. He offers more tax cuts for the wealthy despite the public's overwhelming support for taxing the rich.

President Obama alluded to this point in what he thought were off-the-record comments to supporters last Thursday night: "When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure he's just being America's accountant, that he's being responsible, I mean, this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health-care bill—but wasn't paid for. So it's not on the level."

Republicans have been whining about what a big meanie Obama is for stating the obvious: Washington Republicans only became obsessed with cutting the deficit when Democrats came to power and it was time to clean up the spending mess created during the Bush years. I make the distinction "Washington" Republicans, because many Republicans outside the capital were disgusted by the spending done on the GOP's watch; they have the moral authority to complain now. But please don't make us listen to the people who kept two wars off the books to make spending look lower than it was lecture us about fiscal responsibility...

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel is licking his chops over the prospect of making the GOP pay for its overreach. He told The Washington Post's Greg Sargent on Friday, "When we win back the majority, people will look back at this vote [for the Ryan plan] as a defining one that secured the majority for Democrats."

Yet even the pugnacious Newt Gingrich told The New York Times that Ryan's plans to overhaul Medicare is "a dangerous political exercise."

When Newt Gingrich is urging caution, you know you are on thin ice.

But then we get this. Excerpts:

Boomers don’t want to give up their sweet deal, but the rest of us have reason to embrace Ryan’s “radical” plans, writes Kirsten Powers...

Unfortunately, the future looks...bleak for today’s young people. No amount of coddling by their well-provided-for Boomer parents can save Generation Y and the Millennials from the dire economic conditions they face, including criminal levels of educational debt. Pensions have gone the way of the horse and buggy. You want to retire with health-care benefits, as both my professor parents did? Good luck. As the 1994 movie turned Gen-X mantra has it: Reality Bites.

Generation X chronicler Jeff Gordinier, has written that Gen-Xers suffer from “athazagoraphobia”—“an abnormal and persistent fear of being forgotten or ignored.” Except it’s not really a phobia; it’s been reality for a long time. Maybe that is about to change.

Enter Ryan. While Democrats attack his Medicare plan as “radical” and portray him as pushing granny off the cliff, young people don’t seem to be buying this caricature. Or maybe “radical” is what they want.

A Zogby/JZ Analytics poll Tuesday showed increased support among voters 18-29 for the Romney ticket, which pollster John Zogby attributed to the Ryan pick. President Obama received just 49 percent of the youth vote, versus Romney’s 41 percent. (Obama took home 66 percent of the youth vote against McCain in 2008.)

...Jon Cowan, the CEO of the centrist think tank Third Way told me, “Ryan is doing the country a huge service by putting this on the table.” Cowan is the former founder of Lead or Leave, a Gen X group that gained prominence in the 1990s as it rang the alarm bells for reducing the deficit and dealing with entitlements. He doesn’t believe Ryan’s plan is the best way to reform Medicare, though he concedes that it is a serious plan. He cautions that Democrats may find themselves in political peril in the next 10 years if they don’t come up with a substantive alternative plan. He says, “There are a lot of younger voters who say of the Ryan plan, ‘at least I get something… at least there is a plan’. If you don’t get in there and offer a plan you give up the high ground on policy.”

... Yes, our expectations for government benefits when we retire have been lowered so much that the idea that we would get anything at all seems like a bonanza. Ryan’s plan also seems a lot less scary when you consider that his partner on it is the liberal Oregon Senator Ron Wyden.

Still, the attacks by Democrats on Ryan and his plans for entitlement reform are scaring Boomers—who don’t want to lose the good deal they have and don’t realize Ryan’s plans wouldn’t impact anyone collecting Medicare now or who will start in the next 10 years—and could indeed cost Romney in November.

But Ryan is young and is poised to be the intellectual leader of the conservative movement for the next generation. He will be a force to be reckoned with.

Name-calling and distortions of his plan by Democrats is not an effective long-term strategy, nor is it good for the country.

Well. Combine that with Newsweek's cover story, and this is getting interesting.  The Daily Beast, where the latter Kirsten Powers story was published, owns Newsweek.