Kerry Picket - El Presidente camp - We are intentionally limiting crowd size at rallies

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By Kerry Picket - The Washington Times

August 18, 2012, 09:09PM

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The presumptive GOP presidential and vice presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan are attracting  thousands of supporters to their campaign rallies since Mr. Romney named Mr. Ryan to the bottom of the ticket. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken notice of the massive crowds at the Romney Ryan stump speeches and sent out an urgent e-mail to their supporters, reported The Washington Examiner last week. 

However, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not drawing the crowds they once could. The New York Times reported that the Obama campaign said that it is intentionally limiting crowd size at their events because of security and cost:

“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd."

Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.

The Romney campaign told the New York Times that the smaller turnout at Obama events shows there is an “enthusiasm gap” for Obama. 

A Romney spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, provided photos of three packed events: 5,000 at a Memorial Day weekend rally in San Diego, 2,200 in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in March, and 4,200 in Denver in mid-February. More typical appearances draw 300 to 500 people. An event in Ohio three weeks ago attracted about 400, with about 100 more in an overflow room. Last week in Colorado, Mr. Romney spoke to about 200 people at a school in Basalt. 

 Over 10,000 fellow Wisconsinites cheered on Rep. Ryan almost a week ago and thousands welcomed him on Saturday to the Florida retirement community known as The Villages.

Kerry Picket

Kerry Picket, Opinion Blogger/Editor of The Watercooler, was formerly associate producer for the Media Research Center, a content producer for Robin Quivers of "The Howard Stern Show" on Sirius satellite radio and a production assistant and copy writer at MTV.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/aug/18/obama-camp-we-are-intentionally-limiting-crowd-siz/

h/t MK

Smart Democrats Should Be Worried - Who said any of them are smart?

By John Fund

August 11, 2012 11:21 A.M.

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399

Liberal pundits are already fanning out in force to attack and discredit Paul Ryan. Michael Tomasky, who recently wrote a Newsweek cover story calling Mitt Romney a “wimp,” has now decided that Romney’s bold move is “a terrible choice” because Ryan has proven himself to be an extremist on budget issues.

No doubt there are many Democrats rubbing their hands in glee in contemplation of reviving some version of the ad that featured an actor playing Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff. But the smarter ones are worried.
First, if Ryan is an extremist and his proposals are so unpopular, how has he won election seven times in a Democratic district? His lowest share of the vote was 57 percent — in his first race. He routinely wins over two-thirds of the vote. When Obama swept the nation in 2008, he carried Ryan’s district by four points. But at the same time, Ryan won reelection with 65 percent of the vote, meaning that a fifth of Obama voters also voted for him.
Ryan has pointed out to me that no Republican has carried his district for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. “I have held hundreds of town-hall meetings in my district explaining why we have to take bold reform steps, and I’ve found treating people like adults works,” he told me. “All those ads pushing elderly woman off the cliffs don’t work anymore if you lay out the problem.”
Second, Democrats know that Ryan has Reaganesque qualities that make him appealing to independent, middle-class voters. Take the cover story on Ryan that the Isthmus, a radically left-wing Madison, Wis. newspaper, ran on him in 2009. “Ryan, with his sunny disposition and choirboy looks, projects compassion and forcefully proclaims dedication to his district,” the story reported. “And he’s proved he is not unyieldingly pro-corporate, as when he recently joined in condemnation of AIG ‘retention’ bonuses.”
Third, Ryan’s ideas aren’t that novel or scary. The idea of “premium support” for Medicare, which would change the program’s one-size-fits-all policy to a private-insurance model with public options, was endorsed by a bipartisan commission appointed by Bill Clinton back in the 1990s. Late last year, Ryan announced a new version of his proposal with a new partner signing on: Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who first achieved political prominence as an advocate for seniors.
Four, Ryan puts Wisconsin and its ten electoral votes in play. Polls have shown that President Obama holds a five to seven point lead in Wisconsin — significant, but much less than Obama’s 14-point margin in 2008. With Ryan on the ticket, polls show the race is dead even.
Five, if Republicans were looking for a superior candidate, they’ve found it in Ryan. His maiden speech as the GOP vice-presidential candidate was perfectly pitched:

We won’t duck the tough issues . . . we will lead!
We won’t blame others…we will take responsibility!
We won’t replace our founding principles . . . we will reapply them!

Echoes of Ronald Reagan at his best.
Ryan was judged to have already had the better of President Obama in televised exchanges on Obamacare. His debate with Joe Biden this October might well be remembered as cruel and unusual punishment for dim vice presidents. Recall that Sarah Palin fought a much more engaged Joe Biden to a draw in their 2008 vice-presidential debate.
Six, as Democratic consultant Joe Trippi acknowledged today on Fox News, Ryan will bring in a flood of donations from overjoyed conservatives and tea-party members. Romney had a problem with energizing the GOP base. That problem is now solved, and that will make it easier to pump up conservative turnout.
Democrats will no doubt try to make Paul Ryan into a younger version of the devil they’ve tried to paint Mitt Romney as. But they should worry about fighting a campaign on fundamental issues in a weak economy. That’s precisely how Jimmy Carter, the last Democratic president to run for reelection during hard times, wound up losing so badly that it not only cost Democrats control of the U.S. Senate but damaging the liberal brand for years afterwards.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/313732/smart-democrats-should-be-worried-john-fund

http://conservativebyte.com/2012/08/smart-democrats-should-be-worried/

VIDEO - Paul Ryan took apart El Presidente and sodomized medicine -- in 6 minutes!

Paul Ryan: Hiding Spending Doesn't Reduce Spending

 

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Uploaded by AmericanRoadmap on Feb 25, 2010

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future."
(Remarks by President Obama to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)

This afternoon Budget Committee Ranking Member Ryan walked through why the bill put forward by Democrats FAILS the President's deficit test.
--

The Majority Leader said the bill scores as reducing deficit by $131 billion over the next 10 years.

First a little bit about CBO: I work with them every single day; very good people; great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is fill of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors.

Now what do I mean when I say that?

First off, the bill has ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. The true ten year cost when subsidies kick-in? $2.3 trillion.

The bill is full of gimmicks that more than erase the false claim of deficit reduction:

- $52 billion of savings is claimed by counting increased Social Security payroll revenues. These dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries, and claiming to offset the cost of this bill either means were double-counting or were not going to pay Social Security benefits.

- $72 billion in savings is claimed from the CLASS Act long-term care insurance. These so-called savings are not offsets, but rather premiums collected to pay for future benefits. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has called these savings, A ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Additionally, the nearly half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts cannot be counted twice. Medicare is in dire need of reform in order to make certain that we can ensure health security for future seniors.

Using Medicare as a piggy bank, it raids a half trillion dollars from retirees health coverage to fund the creation of another open-ended health care entitlement.

The Presidents chief Medicare actuary says up to 20% of Medicare providers may go bankrupt or stop taking Medicare beneficiaries as a result. Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage they now enjoy.

Objections to the policy aside, you cannot use these savings twice to both extend the life of Medicare and to pay for other spending. The half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts are either to extend the programs solvency or to reduce the cost of this deficit but not both as its authors claim.

When you strip away the double-counting of Medicare cuts, the so-called savings from Social Security payroll taxes and the CLASS Act, the deficit increases by $460 billion over first ten years and $1.4 trillion over second ten years.

Finally, one of the most expensive and most cynical of the gimmicks applies to Medicare physician payments, the so-called Doc Fix.

By your own estimate, the Doc Fix adds an additional $371 billion to the cost of health care reform. With the price tag beyond what most Americans could handle, the Majority decided to simply remove this costly provision and deal with it in a stand-alone bill.

Ignoring this additional cost does not remove it from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending doesnt reduce spending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs

http://drudgereport.com/