Paul Ryan Gives An Acceptance Speech That Most People Will End Up Forgetting
Paul Ryan did what he needed to do last night, but in the long run his speech will be lost to history.
Last night, Paul Ryan took to the stage to accept the Republican nomination for Vice-President and, at least judging by the reaction of the delegates on the floor, succeeded quite handily in setting the tone for the rest of the convention leading up to tonight’s speech by Mitt Romney:
TAMPA, Fla. — Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, whose budget plans have come to define conservative opposition to President Obama’s governing philosophy, accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination on Wednesday as his party embraced the gamble that the small-government principles he represents have more political payoff than peril.
Before an audience of party faithful that he brought to life with his address, Mr. Ryan, 42, sought to turn his relative youth to his advantage, saying he would stand with Mitt Romney in embarking on a generational struggle to protect the very social program — Medicare — that Democrats accuse him of trying to dismantle.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate,” Mr. Ryan said to thunderous applause from the Republican National Convention, making it clear that he and Mr. Romney have no intention of backing off in the face of withering Democratic attacks and unease among some Republican Congressional candidates fearful of a backlash from voters.
The crowd came to hear an indictment of Mr. Obama, and as he gave the highest-profile speech of his career, Mr. Ryan delivered one, fully adopting the vice-presidential nominee’s traditional role of leading the charge against the other party. Welcomed to sustained applause of a full minute, he delivered his address with a mix of searing takedowns of Mr. Obama (“a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind”), a gentle joke about the songs Mr. Romney favors (“which I’ve heard on the campaign bus and on many hotel elevators”), and appeals to undecided voters to leave behind whatever lingering hopes they had that Mr. Obama could bring the economy back to full strength.
“Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House,” Mr. Ryan said, drawing a roar of approval. “What’s missing is leadership in the White House.”
Mr. Ryan even at one point appeared to flirt with accusations of socialism as he recounted his own work history, starting with his days as a waiter. “That’s the American dream,” he said. “That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”
If his vigorous support for shrinking the size and role of government has left the party exposed to withering attacks from Mr. Obama and the Democrats, it did not seem to cause concern. Rather, Mr. Ryan ran headlong into the fire he expects to draw.
Mr. Ryan made it clear that he would portray the Romney-Ryan ticket as protecting Medicare, not “raiding it,” as he said Democrats would, saying his own mother’s reliance on the program should be proof of his commitment to it.
“A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my mom’s generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours,” he said. “So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on this issue, the usual posturing on the left isn’t going to work. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program and raiding it.” Mr. Ryan’s final line — which included the declaration “We can make the safety net safe again” — brought a cheer resembling something like a last-minute goal in overtime of a championship game.
The night gave the first real answer about what sort of wingman Mr. Ryan will be for Mr. Romney. He showed that he was more than willing to go after Mr. Obama, using a mocking tone often laced with humor.
“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life,” he said midway through his speech, eliciting laughter and delighted applause.
But he also showed that he would serve as a steadfast advocate for Mr. Romney, pivoting between the two messages.
“He helped start businesses and turn around failing ones,” Mr. Ryan said of Mr. Romney. “By the way, being successful in business — that’s a good thing.”
(…)
Mr. Romney’s aides have said they believe that antipathy for Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul has upended the political dynamic of Medicare in way that tilts the presumed advantage away from the Democrats. Mr. Ryan’s speech reflected that thinking.
“Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country,” he said. “And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly.”
Mr. Ryan was referring to a provision of the health law that cuts more than $700 billion in projected spending from the Medicare program. Mr. Ryan’s budget assumes similar reductions, a point Democrats will be certain to continue making in the weeks ahead.
Likewise, Mr. Ryan, whose deep budget-cutting plans drew intense criticism from Mr. Obama long before the Republican ticket was completed, accused the president of failing to act on the recommendations of his own bipartisan debt commission. Mr. Ryan did not mention that he had served on that commission and dissented from its policy proposals, which included specific steps to reduce budget deficits.
But that was of no concern to the audience, whose raucous reception of Mr. Ryan was a resounding affirmation of his popularity with conservatives who have at times shown less enthusiasm for Mr. Romney.
The reaction to the speech has been about what you’d expect it to be. Conservatives have praised it quite heavily, while the liberal blogopshere is filled with accusations that Ryan was misleading on several levels. James Joyner has already dealt with the issue surrounding Ryan’s claims about the closing of a General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. Other portions of Ryan’s speech that have aroused ire include his comment that President Obama essentially ignored the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Commission without mentioning that Ryan himself was a member of that Commission and ended up voting against the plan because of the tax provisions that it contained. Ryan also repeated a claim that has been a central part of the Romney campaign for weeks now, the accusation that Affordable Care Act takes some $700 billion from Medicare without mentioning that Ryan’s own plan does the same thing. We’ll no doubt here these same claims from Ryan and Romney, and the Democratic push back, throughout the campaign, and the voters can decide how to evaluate the competing claims.
In our current political climate, though, it’s not clear that campaigns care about fact checkers anymore:
“The press is all full of itself about how they’re going to declare that it’s false,” [Mickey] Kaus says [about the Romney campaign’s welfare ad], “but it’s really a lot less false than you think it is.”
Dickerson replies that that is merely Kaus’s interpretation, and then Fournier — a guy who, if you’ll forgive my pomposity, has pretty much devoted his adult life to the pursuit of truth — has a bit of a Howard Beale moment:
With all due respect, to say ‘It’s a lot less wrong than you think it is’ is a lot like saying, ‘She’s a lot less pregnant than you think she is.’ Wrong is wrong, and the ad is distorted. But to John’s point, both sides are making up lies, both sides are distorting…. Both sides are demeaning the process, both sides are making the public mad as hell about the process — including the media institution…. That’s why we all have to take a good look at how we’re conducting ourselves.
The bottom line, of course, is that the ad is continuing to run. It is continuing to run because the Romney campaign’s polling shows it to be effective. And therefore, kind of by definition, the press pushback is not having much effect — at least not so far, and at least not in the battlegrounds where the ad is playing.
To a large degree, I have to wonder what the average voter actually things of these charges and counter-charges. I don’t think that many of them spend their time obsessively reading political blogs and fact-check web sites looking for lies. Indeed, it seems rather apparent that the common attitude in America these days is that all politicians lie when it suits them. So, when voters here one side saying the other side is lying do they really listen, or do they just dismiss it as more partisan rhetoric? I’m beginning to think it’s the latter, and not the former.
The truth about Ryan’s speech, though, is that, in the end, it’s not likely to leave much of a long-standing mark on either the race itself or Ryan’s career:
We want to make a final point about Ryan’s acceptance speech, and it’s the same one we made yesterday: Don’t get carried away by a strong VP speech; it typically doesn’t have a long shelf life. Think Ferraro in ’84, Bentsen in ’88, Kemp in ’96, Lieberman in ’00, and Edwards in ’04. The exception, of course, is Sarah Palin in ’08. But she isn’t the rule.
Palin’s speech is remembered mostly, though, because she was a relative unknown before McCain announced her as his VP pick on August 29th, 2008 and that speech was the first opportunity that anyone — the delegates in the hall, reporters, pundits, and the American people — had really had a chance to see Sarah Palin and hear what she had to say. Thanks to a well-written speech and a crowd in Minneapolis that was very receptive to Palin both personally and ideologically, she hit a home run that night and, albeit temporarily, pushed the McCain campaign into a lead in the polls that lasted until mid-September. All the same, though, what is it that everyone actually remembers about Palin’s 2008 speech? It’s this:
Can any of you name much of anything else that Palin said in her speech in 2008, or anything that any other Vice-Presidential nominee said in any of their speeches? Have we ever had an election where anything a Vice-Presidential candidate said during the course of a campaign, never mind in their prime time convention speech really had an influence on the election. I’d dare to say that the answer to that question is a pretty clear no. The purpose of the running mate’s nominating speech is two-fold. First, it introduces the running mate to the country since, in most cases, we’re talking about someone who has not been a major national figure before being selected to join the Presidential ticket. Second, it sets up the crowd, and the viewing audience, for the far more important speech they’ll hear twenty-four hours later from the Presidential nominee. The speech isn’t intended to sell the Vice-Presidential running mate, or their ideas. Indeed, the entire job of a running mate is to sell the Presidential candidate and to play the traditional running mates role of “attack dog.” Judged from that standard, Ryan’s speech strikes me as having been a complete success. Pundits and partisans will continue to argue about the substance of his speech, but the American people will have moved on. Win or lose, few people will remember Paul Ryan’s speech last night, and that’s just how it’s supposed to be.
When even Fox News is calling Ryan a liar, I doubt it will be lost to history.
Is this just wishful thinking, considering the amount of lies in his speech?
I was wondering how long it would take for Doug to come up with a “Both Sides Do it” post.
So its OK that the Republican VP candidate on national TV and in prime time makes a speech that’s 40 minutes of blatant falsehoods? Is the deault now that politicians just lie and we shouldn’t even try to hold them to some standard of truth? Allrighty then.
I hope you understand that you have just forfeited your right to criticise Harry Reid or the “Understands” commercial. So lets take it as given that Mitt caused the death of that womabn, just as we should hold Obama responsible for not retroactively keeping that GM plant open.
He has the believability of a tele-evangelist, which is to say, none at all.
Under his proposal his mother’s generation will receive Medicare as we now know it. Under the Ryan-Romney Plan Medicare wouldn’t be eviscerated until it takes effect for people over the age of 55 right now. It is future generations that will be thrown under the bus. We know that his plan would annually shift hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare expenses onto future generations of retirees.
The lasting problem for Ryan and Romney is that they won’t be able to defend the lies in their commercials and speeches when confronted about them during debates. It won’t be hard for Obama to destroy the Welfare lie that Romney has been pushing, and then segue from that to the fact that Romney’s team KNEW it was a lie when they began to push it, and decided to keep on with it anyway. And every newspaper and fact-checker in the country will back Obama up on it the next day, because it happens to be the truth.
It’s hard to effectively defend lies when you are confronted on them to your face, by someone who won’t just passively move on to the next question. I haven’t seen any evidence that Romney will be able to effectively do so.
If it is remembered it will not be a positive for Ryan or the GOP. People still remember Pat Buchanan’s speech from 1992, and not fondly. Paul Ryan better hope that speech is forgotten or his political career is toast.
I fully expect the HBO movie (release date 2015) based on the book by some member of the political media and staring a very talented lefty actor will keep this alive through 2016. I just want to know who is playig Mitt.
@Cycloptichorn:
Romney need not to worry, to be fair, since both sides do it, and it’s all he said/she said, the moderators will stay clear from anything that would make it possible for Obama to do that. And if he tries, he will get a scolding for being mean and disruptive.
@Brutalfacts: @Brutalfacts:
To really get the essence of Mitt, he will be computer generated.
@PJ:
There you go again…
@Nikki:
fact-checking the factcheckers on Ryan’s speech
Obama camp melts down over Ryan’s speech.
she hit a home run that night and, albeit temporarily, pushed the McCain campaign into a lead in the polls
Your phrasing makes it sound like her speech was singlehandedly responsible for McCain’s rise in the polls (which was in fact a fairly standard post-convention bump).
Doug, the problem is that the Republicans have spent the last several decades going on at great length, in ever election cycle, about how it’s all about “character”. They’ve painted themselves into a corner now, because so many GOP candidates, and Romney/Ryan in particular, have demonstrated at literally every single opportunity that they have no character whatsoever. Even mainstream news agencies are starting to notice the sheer volume and baldness of the lying. Their own campaigns trumpet the fact that they don’t care if what they’re saying is true or not. You can dance all you want to the “both sides do it” tango, but on one side, it’s really reaching critical mass…
I trust memeorandum to tell me the vibe. Maybe that vibe is at the political junkie level, and possibly below the “average voter’s” horizion, but …
The “Ryan lies” meme is kicking ass right now.
Do you think, or just hope, that it will be forgotten? This kind of reminds me of Romney’s European trip. Your first assertion in the face of that epic fail was that it would be forgotten too. Agenda much?
Simply in-f’ing-credible. CNN was calling Ryan a liar immediately after the speech.
Wolf Blitzer:
Erin Burnett:
The AP, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, ABC, even Fox News….all calling Ryan a liar.
But you want to make believe it’s just some liberal bloggers.
Are you a professional hack…actually paid by the Campaign…or just a wannabe???
@C. Clavin:
I think that’s from Great Moments in CNN Euphemisms.
Awesome headline.
I think if they lose…it will be forgotten.
If they win it will be a case study for how you can lie through your teeth to the American public and neither the press nor the public care enough to do anything about it.
Jan,
Following up on the other day…have you sought professional mental health care?
I just spotted the paid advertisement for Romney up in the corner of the page…so I guess you are a paid hack…at least on some level.
My bad…maybe it’s not a paid advertisement.
It seems that if it’s remembered…..it will be remembered for being, um, half-false.
My comment got caught in the spam filter. Please rescue it!
Ryan’s lies about Medicare were fairly crazy. If Dick Cheney went up in the 2004 and started going off on John Kerry for supporting the Iraq War and how terrible a decision that was, people would have rightly assumed that he’d been the victim of a cardiac event.
@C. Clavin:
I disagree. I think, if they lose (knock on wood), this will be noted as the point where the mainstream public started to realize that it’s not just Romney’s personality, it’s the entire party that is completely empty and without any moral center.
I’m far from a fan of Ryan (and I think he was displaying internet style truth, but to be fair, I doubt even 1% of political speeches are remembered for any length of time. Even the best speech writers and delivers only ocassionally turn out a memorable speech – and even there, its mainly just a few soundbites that are remembered.
@george:
Well, everyone is treating it as important because Florida might hinge on the claims and fact checking.
@jan:
Snicker. Hotair and Townhall. Yeah, ok.
@john personna:
Sure, but Doug was talking about speeches with long term memoriability. I don’t think I’ve heard live a single speech with that quality, though I’ve read of a few in the past (such as Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, JFK’s inaugarial speech, Churchill’s “we will never surrender” speech).
In Canada, the only speech that gets quoted long term is Trudeau’s “fuddle duddle” (what he claimed he said when to others it sounded like he dropped the F-bomb) – and even there, just that one expression.
Even limiting it to the short term I’m kind of skeptical that what Romney said will have much impact either way (even from those who don’t bother fact checking and take what he said at face value), because I doubt most voters pay much attention to vice-presidential candidates. In fact, I suspect most don’t even know who the vice-presidential candidates are – and I’m not sure they should.
The only vice-presidential speech (if you can call it that) that I recall is the line “I knew Jack Kennedy … ” line that cut Qualye down. And that didn’t alter the outcome either.
I find it shocking that my heartfelt concern for another member of the OTB community got me a down-vote. You cold-hearted hater, you.
the
liberal blogopsherereality is filled withaccusationsfacts that show Ryan was misleading on several levels.James Joyner has already dealt with the issue surrounding Ryan’s claims about the closing of a General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin…by lying about it.
FTFY.
Other portions of Ryan’s speech that have aroused ire include his comment that President Obama essentially ignored the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Commission without mentioning that Ryan himself was a member of that Commission and ended up voting against the plan because of the tax provisions that it contained.
He also lied about the commission. He claimed “They came back with an urgent report.” The commission failed to even approve the report they produced.
Ryan also repeated a claim that has been a central part of the Romney campaign for weeks now, the accusation that Affordable Care Act takes some $700 billion from Medicare without mentioning that Ryan’s own plan does the same thing.
He also lied by claiming the $700 billion constituted cuts to Medicare beneficiaries.
All they have is lies. This isn’t some fibbing about accomplishments here and there. This is an entire campaign built on lies. They lie about their opponent and his policies, they lie about their own policies, they lie about their personal histories, they lie about United States history, they lie about simply everything. Every claim, every promise, every stat, every anecdote, every breath is a lie.
I thought this speech would have been remembered, not so much for the content as such, but for it being packed with lies that are easily proven as lies. But then I remembered that Romney would be holding his speech later tonight, and I’m certain he will be able to pack even more lies into his.
But maybe they will both will be remembered as the two most deceiving and false acceptance speeches at a Convention?
@Nikki: Fox News did not call Ryan a liar, as I saw it. It was a “Fox News Contributor” – which would be similar to Bob Beckel making the comment and claiming it is “Fox News”. Beckel is clearly a left-leaning Democrat, his own self-description. And would expect nothing else but from him. But he is also a Fox News Contributor. So, the comments you are referring to and labeling as “Fox News” is a total distortion of the facts. But as Doug says in his article – that is the norm for today.
Exactly right…once again Doug proves that his claims of being an independent libertarian are bogus, as he continues to carry water for Republicans…
@ James…
According to the website; “…Sally Kohn is a Fox News contributor and writer…”
It was posted on FoxNews.com.
How is that not FoxNews saying it?
What other qualifications does it need to meet your criteria?
It was the debate, not the convention speech, but: “Who am I? Why am I here?” — Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot’s VP running mate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpX-5jQjQ0
Although the person I really remember delivering that line is Phil Hartman during SNL.
http://www.hulu.com/site-player/playerembedwrapper.swf?referrer=none&eid=ytxrdklf2g_sulrt3a4pqw&st=&et=&it=&ml=0&siteHost=http://www.hulu.com
@jan:
Well Jan–I guess you didn’t have time to make up your own stuff today. You just went straight to hot air and townhall for your daily dose of right wingnut fiction.
I do remember something about Palin’s speech other than the hockey mom joke. It was the way her mouth turned up in a contemptuous little sneer every time she took a swing at Obama. The Palin Sneer (TM) led me to associate her with all those other high school mean girls who never grew up, an image that remains with me to this day and that Palin has done nothing to dispel.
I didn’t see Ryan’s speech. I drifted off somewhere in the middle of Huckabee (the perils of living in the Eastern Time Zone–we were living in LA in 2008) but I’m pretty sure it will be as forgettable as most political speeches are.
@ Fiona…
Usually she just copies and pastes and only pretends that it’s her own ideas.
Must be feeling lazy today.
From Ezra Klein re: the WaPo’s article about Ryan lyin’….
I urge you to read the entire piece…it’s fair and balanced.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/a-not-very-truthful-speech-in-a-not-very-truthful-campaign/
Lefty circle jerk agrees that things they don’t like are ‘lies’.
@bandit:
Take a breath, relax, try not to post comments that are self-refuting.
i just found this website and it didnt take long to realize that its a thinly disguised “non-partisan” Digi-rag. i see alot of comments to the effect that Ryans Lies were no worse than the democrat lies in this compaign. My question is, “WHAT LIES ARE YOU SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT?”. Its just more evidence that the Republican Party is DESPERATE in the wake of a black man with a middle eastern name beating a well loved and well Respected War Hero and a hot soccer mom (excuse me, MAMMA GRIZZLY). they thought HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED IN AMERICA…because the american people are no longer left to Going to the Library and pulling up old news articles to fact check…FACT CHECKING IS INSTANT, just click on the mouse and your there. Remember when Bush Senior shocked americans at how out of touch with the modern world he was when he visited the grocery store and saw the Modern Miracle of lazer scanners at the checkout line? this is the exact phenomenon that the Right wing is facing right now in history….the same thing that happened to the Whigs. and look where they ended up….LOST AND FORGOTTEN.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE NOT SO LOST WITHOUT YOU MR REPUBLICAN…they are smarter than you hoped for.
another very blaring problem with the Republican National Info-mercial is the Collective Chant…basically the chosen THEME for the event….”WE BUILT THIS”. that particular Chant is based on a Badly Edited Speech. The Right Media is taking a long comment made by the president and simply repeating a Few words…..the president was trying to say that No matter What you Do in business in America you didnt build it YOURSELF….THE CUSTOMERS helped you build it, THE EMPLOYEES helped you build it, THE CONTRACTORS WHO CONSTRUCTED THE STOREFRONTS helped you build it, the ROADS that the local governments built HELPED WITH YOUR BUSINESS. in other words, IT TAKES A WHOLE COMMUNITY OF EFFORT TO MAKE ANY SUCCESSFUL VENTURE….but nope, they took ONE simple phrase and repeated it the ill chosen phrase OVER and OVER and OVER till they nearly believed it themselves. in one Romney Campaign ad they had the president saying something that on the face of it was VERY UNFLATTERING…turns out the statement was a QUOTE of something that MCCAIN had said before! how far will they go in the propaganda? the head of the Nazi “Information” ministry said “if you repeat a BIG ENOUGH LIE OVER AND OVER AND OVER IT WILL SOON BECOME THE TRUTH”….and then then try to say the president is no better than a Nazi. wierd