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Maria Cardona: Ryan distorts the truth

Paul Ryan knocked it out of the park from a rhetorical standpoint and brought down the house as expected. Great line about what was on his iPod versus what was on Mitt Romney's. Great play for the youth vote!

But it was disappointing to see him continue the tremendous distortion about President Barack Obama cutting Medicare, when his own plan calls for the same cuts that will actually reduce benefits for seniors. We heard continued criticisms but no real solutions. He said he would keep our spending to 20% of GDP but didn't outline what programs he would cut to get us there. Perhaps we already know why.

We have his blueprint in the Ryan Budget, which does nothing for middle-class families except make them bear the brunt of the tax cuts he would give wealthy Americans.

Ryan talked about moral creed, but his budget slashes programs aimed at protecting those that he said we have an obligation to protect. If that is the Romney/Ryan American dream, then voters -- young, old, middle class, African-American, Latinos and women -- would do well to say thanks, but we'll keep our hope and change even if it takes four more years to get there.

Hilary Rosen: Ryan speech short on ideas and misleading on Obama

Rep. Paul Ryan was supposed to be the smart addition to the ticket -- the one full of great ideas and policy truths. Unfortunately, his speech to the Republican convention Wednesday night was short on policy ideas and anything but truthful.

-- He told a story he knows to be untrue about a GM plant closing after the president had promised to keep it open, yet the plant actually closed when George W. Bush was president.

-- He criticized the president for rejecting the conclusions of his budget commission, yet didn't say that Ryan himself was on the commission and voted against the recommendations.

-- He complained about the deficit but neglected to mention his multiple votes over the years in Congress for things such as unlimited and off-budget war appropriations and tax cuts for the wealthy that have produced record deficits.

-- He attacked Obama for cutting $700 billion out of Medicare (though the Obama plan puts some of the savings from cutting fraud back into actual health care), yet he neglected to admit that his own plan does the same thing.

Ryan offered no policy prescriptions for a new economy.

He obfuscated his own record and deliberately misled the country about Obama's record. Tonight was his introduction to America -- a chance to showcase how Mitt Romney was creating a new guide to the future. This is the next generation Republican leader? Judging from the reaction, I don't think the country was impressed.

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Paul Ryan on Wednesday night told a story about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama telling automotive workers that government can help keep their plant going -- an account that Ryan reportedly got wrong previously.

Did the Wisconsin congressman get it right as he accepted the GOP nomination for vice president at the Republican National Convention?

Ryan discussed Obama's February 2008 speech at the General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin -- a plant that eventually closed. According to Ryan, Obama had said that "if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years."

"When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day."

First, some context. Ryan reportedly recalled this event incorrectly just days ago, during an August 16 speech in Ohio.

Ryan reportedly alleged that Obama said he'd "keep that plant open," and therefore broke his promise because the plant closed.

"That plant was shut down in 2009. I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open," Ryan said, according to the Janesville Gazette. "One more broken promise."

The Detroit News pointed out that Obama made no such promise in the February 13, 2008, speech, and indeed, we've seen no account suggesting that Obama did. Here is the quote at issue, according to an account kept by the Council on Foreign Relations:

"I know that General Motors received some bad news yesterday, and I know how hard your governor has fought to keep jobs in this plant. But I also know how much progress you've made -- how many hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles you're churning out," Obama said. "And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years."

By "bad news," Obama apparently was referring to GM's February 12, 2008, announcement that it had a $38.7 billion adjusted net loss for 2007.

So, back on August 16 of this year, Ryan was wrong for saying Obama promised to keep it open.

the plant halted production in December 2008, and saying that Ryan essentially was criticizing Obama for failing to save a plant that closed before Obama took office.

However, while December 2008 saw the end of the vast majority of the plant's work, the Gazette itself has reported that the plant didn't close fully until April 2009.

Now, compare Ryan's Wednesday night statement with the one he gave on August 16. On Wednesday, Ryan said nothing of Obama making a promise, but rather quoted him.

The quote is truncated (in Ryan's prepared remarks released to the media, an ellipsis replaces the missing words, "give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition").

But to fairly evaluate Obama's statement, at least two pieces of context -- missing from Ryan's account -- would be useful: First, that Obama wasn't telling this plant that he'd save it from a pending closure. He wasn't addressing a plant that he knew to be closing, because the closure announcement didn't come until four months after his speech. Second, although the plant's last bit of production stopped early in Obama's presidency and the plant remains closed, the closure was planned before Obama became president. http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/politics/pol-fact-check-ryan-gm/index.ht
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For decades, the Janesville, Wis., plant gave thousands of people a comfortable living. In 1970, the year Ryan was born, it employed 7,000.

Ryan stirred memories of the factory on Aug. 16, 2012, attacking President Barack Obama during a campaign speech in Ohio.

"I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open. One more broken promise," Ryan said.

He made the same point Aug. 29 during his speech to the Republican National Convention in Tampa:

"My home state voted for President Obama," he said. "When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."

Did Obama make such a promise as a candidate and break it after becoming president?

Actually, the plant closed before he even took office.

Ryan said Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing. But we don't see evidence he explicitly made such a promise -- and more importantly, the Janesville plant shut down before he took office.

We rate Ryan's statement False.

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To anyone watching Ryan’s speech who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality. On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.

Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.

Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.

Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.

Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.

Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president.

Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.

These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance.

At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."

Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-w
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