Ryan Offers Lies to Those Who Demand Lies

I was going to start off by saying that Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican Convention last night proves that Team Romney's got nothing. But that wouldn't exactly be on the money. Ryan managed to spend a half hour attacking Obama, so it would be more accurate to say that Paul Ryan's speech proved that Team Romney has nothing true. You can blow a half hour on lies, an hour on lies, or -- as Mitt Romney himself has proven -- a few months on lies. The amount of time you can spend lying is limited only by your imagination. So, gun to my head demanding I say something nice about Romney-Ryan: they've got a lot of imagination.

The biggest, most obvious, most ridiculous lie was that Barack Obama promised to keep open a Wisconsin auto plant that's shuttered to this day. Of course, the problem is that Obama never made that promise and that the plant closed during the Bush administration.

Not even Fox News can get fully behind this steaming pile of BS. In a piece titled "Paul Ryan's speech in 3 words," Fox's Sally Kohn describes the Ryan speech as "dazzling," "deceiving," and "distracting." You might've noticed that only 33% of those descriptors are positive.

I find myself asking a rhetorical question I ask so often when talking about Republicans; how good can Team Romney's arguments be when they have to lie to support them? They should stand on their own, without embellishment. But they can only stand if they're planted deep, deep in BS. One thing's for certain, Ryan's a good fit for Romney. When they handed Paul Ryan that speech, he knew the timeline of the GM plant -- it's in his hometown. Anyone else would've protested that they'd look like a liar and a fool, but that's only a worry that troubles those capable of shame. Ryan, like his new boss, is apparently shameless.

"The sanctimonious V.P. nominee seems to have forgotten the Ninth Commandment: 'Thou shalt not lie,'" writes Joan Walsh. "Ryan believes he can say anything and get away with it."

That's because, with a certain segment guaranteed to vote Republican, he can. They already believe that Obama's a secret Kenya Muslim Marxist terrorist mole planning to hand America over to the New World Order. They'll believe anything, so long as it sounds like something Rush Limbaugh would say. Because they are -- to a large extent -- nihilists who don't care about the truth. The rest are just gullible.

But it's the former who are the danger to the country -- and those are the ones Ryan's speech was aimed directly toward. It's a widely accepted fact that this will be a "turnout election," with very few undecided voters. The side that gets their base riled up and out the door is seen as the favorite to win. The GOP base just wants to hear damning indictments with a Sarah Palin-like connection to fact. They aren't arguments, they're trolling. They don't care about truth, they just applaud statements most likely to insult liberals.

The Washington Post editorial board writes that Ryan's "speech that was part introduction of himself and his small-town origins, part testimonial to his running mate and -- in largest part -- a slashing and, in many elements, misleading indictment of President Obama as both a spent force and a threat to American freedom. Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama have starkly different visions about the role of government, but to caricature the president’s vision as 'a government-planned life, where everything is free but us' insults voters who surely know better."

This isn't quite true. There where plenty of people listening to that speech who know better. And they aren't insulted because they just don't care.

-Wisco

[image source]