My quick take on Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night is that it is awfully difficult to criticize President Obama when you’ve spent the last fourteen years in Washington dealing with many of the same issues. In five significant cases, Ryan’s attacks on the President were breathtakingly hypocritical.
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1. Ryan said Obama failed to save a General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin:
Here’s what Ryan said:
Actually, Obama’s speech in Janesville happened in February 2008. In June of that same year, G.M. announced the plant would close. Most of it was shuttered in December; it continued producing medium-duty trucks until June 2009, when that, too, stopped, in accordance with the plan announced in 2008. While it’s ludicrous to criticize a politician for a plant closing that predated his time in office, Ryan himself stands accused of not helping to save the factory.
As I reported recently, when I asked pro-Ryan Republican John Beckord, the leader of the local Janesville business-development organization, if there was some project where Ryan’s anti-government views conflicted with the needs of local business, he hesitated before saying, “I suppose there could have been a full-court press to just cobble together as much federal money as possible on our behalf to make it irresistible for G.M. to keep this plant open.”
2. Ryan pilloried Obama’s stimulus bill:
But as has by now been well documented, Ryan lobbied for stimulus money for his district. Furthermore, as I reported, the major economic success stories in Janesville—a business incubator, a new medical manufacturer, and a new highway project that will benefit local warehousing businesses—are all linked to federal money, including money from Obama’s 2009 stimulus.
3. Ryan criticized Obama for cutting seven hundred billion dollars from Medicare:
Ryan’s famous budget plan, the Path to Prosperity, repealed every aspect of Obamacare except the changes to Medicare.
(Also, it’s not entirely accurate to say that the money was “funneled.”)
4. Ryan hit Obama for arguing that it was his message and not his policy that failed:
Here’s the section from my piece in the magazine about Ryan’s response when I asked him why his Social Security reform plan failed in 2005:
5. Finally, Ryan attacked Obama for ignoring the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles debt commission:
Guess who the leading Republican budget wonk on that commission was? Yes, Paul Ryan. When “the urgent report” came up for a vote, Ryan voted against it.
Ryan started this race with a reputation for honesty. He’s on his way to losing it.
Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For more of The New Yorker’s convention coverage, visit The Political Scene. You can also read Kelefa Sanneh on Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, Jane Mayer on Republican women, Hendrik Hertzberg on the “We Built It” slogan, George Packer on foreign policy and the R.N.C., Amy Davidson on the floor fight, on the Romney love story, on Chris Christie, and John Cassidy on Ann Romney’s speech.