And So It Begins

The left has absolutely no idea what to make of the Paul Ryan VP pick.  With Sarah Palin, they used the "she's a stupid little tartlett, you wouldn't want Brittany Spears or Lindsey Lohan to be Vice President, would you?"  With Dick Cheney, they used "He's evil!" and "Halliburton!"  Neither of those really work with Mr. Ryan.  So let's see what they're trying.

Of course, there's the old favorite "Mediscare."  With this tactic, they're trying to say that Paul Ryan wants to kill granny.  He'd completely destroy Medicare, they say.  Indeed, using his budget proposal, they've gone beyond that to saying he'd ban birth control.  Yes, ban it.

This could be an effective tactic, but it's fraught with peril.  First off, there's the fact that Paul Ryan has already weathered the Mediscare storm more than once, and is unlikely to flinch from it this time.  He's continually been ready with calm, well reasoned answers about his plan, and he communicates very well.  Over and above that, there's 700 Billion reasons the Obama campaign probably wants to avoid the question of Medicare funding: that's the amount of money, between that taken by ObamaCare to pay for different, new entitlements, and that scheduled to be eaten by sequestration- which Senate Democrats have already said they're willing to face.  It's hard to argue that the other guy wants to gut Medicare when it's your team that just took $700,000,000,000.00 from the program.

Then there's the "he's a wimp" card.  The Huffington Post tried this one already as well.  At his homecoming celebration in Wisconsin, Rep. Ryan got a little misty eyed and had to dry his eyes.  So HuffPo decided to run a caption contest on the photo. 

This could also be an effective tactic, since no one wants to elect a wimp.  Again, though, it's walking a tight-rope.  First, there's the fact it simply isn't true.  Now, that's never stopped Democrats before, and it likely won't this time, but it does make the attacks less effective.  More importantly, their Candidate and VP are President Mom-Jeans and Vice President CHOCKWIT ICE CWEAM!.  Neither one is exactly "alpha-male" material.  President Girl-Bike McCantUseAnUmbrella is going to have a hard time with that line of attack.

The third line of attack I'm seeing is the "he's too inexperienced" line.  Frankly, that one is laughable.  He's got a more hefty resume than Barack Obama did when he won the Presidency, and he's not running for President.  Besides that, would you rather have Joe Biden or Paul Ryan one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

All in all, I think we're in for a rough time as far as how many attacks get launched.  If the Romney/Ryan camp is prepared, and handles them in stride, though, I just don't see how they can be very effective.  In an economy that's had over 8% official unemployment (over 14% real unemploymen) for more than 42 months, where the Democrat Controlled Senate hasn't even come to the table about a budget in 3 years, and we're running trillion dollar deficits every single year, Paul Ryan is exactly what the doctor ordered.  It's going to be hard to show him as anything else.