Wonky Means Crooked



Presumptive vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan has had to expend a lot of energy lately explaining how he and Mitt Romney can criticize President Obama's cutting Medicare costs while at the same time they plan on using those same cuts in their budget plan. 

The Affordable Care Act reduces costs to Medicare by $716 billion over ten years without reducing any benefits paid out to seniors on Medicare for services and uses those savings to pay for other parts of the health care bill. Ryan's budget plan counts on those savings in his budget plan, which Republican nominee Romney calls "marvelous". The natural question is how the two Republicans can praise and plan to use those cuts but then accuse Obama of "gutting Medicare" for doing the same thing. Paul Ryan dismisses it by saying it's "wonky". He states "It gets a  little wonky," but they can criticize Obama because he put those cuts "in the base line"; he states "We would never have done it (passed the health care law patterned after Romney's Massachusetts health care overhaul) in the first place", and because he voted to repeal the entire law it's OK for him to support the very same Medicare cuts Obama supported. But if the cuts are a good idea outside of the health care law why where they a bad idea within it? Notice they are not criticising Obama for what he's done with the cuts, but only the cuts themselves.

A google search using the terms "Paul Ryan" and "wonky" shows a plethora of articles that describe Ryan and his policies as "wonky"; one might assume they are saying that he is himself a wonk, a person who is very interested in a subject and has a broad knowledge of it.  But it should be noted that if you search for the definition of the word "wonky" the first word of the first result is "crooked", and after that you have terms like "shaky", "feeble", "whacked out" and my favorite "not working for no definable reason". Considering Ryan's establishment of this obvious distinction without a difference to explain his and Romney's attack on Obama for enacting a measure they intend to keep in force, perhaps these definitions for the term "wonky" are more apt after all.

Romney Concedes!

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made it clear to the entire world that he has no expectation of winning November's election by his naming Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice-presidential running mate.

The two main goals one hopes to achieve in a choice of running mate is either a widening of appeal for the whole ticket to a broader spectrum of voters or the addition of someone who can help make up for a perceived lack on the main candidate's part. Tapping Ryan for the job accomplishes neither of those goals. Romney's biggest deficit besides an almost complete lack of personal magnetism is the complete absence of any foreign policy experience. As a Congressman Ryan has had zero such exposure, having never even served on a committee related to foreign affairs. And while Ryan certainly has more magnetism than Romney, the only types of voters he tends to attract are those who should already be voting Republican.

This choice seems to scream that, instead of hoping to attract more independent and undecided voters, Romney is scared to death of losing the hard right-wing of the normally reliably Republican electorate. Ryan's appeal lies almost entirely among the Tea Party segment, who as a group care far less about what it takes to win an election, instead preferring neoconservative ideological purity above all else.  To be sure, if Romney had chosen someone  more palatable to independents like Tim Pawlenty there would probably have been some Tea Party party voters who would just opt out of casting any vote at all. Apparently Romney's advisers fear that level of abstention could be high enough to deny him victory in states that are usually considered comfortable wins for most Republican candidates.

Romney's choice of Ryan will seem to many people an act of capitulation to the hard right wing of the Republican party, and that translates to a perceived failure of leadership and an unwillingness to make a hard choice in the face of strong opposition. Surely his advisers must have realized that not only were the Tea Party activists championing Ryan's choice for running mate, but liberal Democrats as well were licking their chops at the prospect of such a dyed-in-the-wool ideologue as Ryan being chosen for the lower spot on the podium. In the final analysis choosing Ryan indicates Romney has given up going on the offensive against Obama and instead is playing defense to avoid an embarassing electoral landslide come November.