Obama campaign is well prepared in matchup against ‘radical’ Ryan

By David Nakamura, Updated: Saturday, August 11, 5:17 PM

Video: Mitt Romney introduced Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) as his vice presidential nominee at a campaign event in Norfolk, Va. on Saturday.

Republican Mitt Romney is betting that his selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as a running mate will rally his conservative base in a nip-and-tuck election. President Obama and his Democratic allies are counting on its having the same effect on their side.

No sooner had Romney introduced the Wisconsin congressman as his vice presidential choice in front of a battleship in Norfolk, Va. on Saturday, than the Obama campaign went to war, painting Ryan as a “radical” ideologue whose extreme views would lead to a reprise of the “same, catastrophic mistakes” of the George W. Bush era.

Democrats in Congress and liberal activist groups piled on, denouncing Ryan and sending out frantic fundraising pitches that played off fears of a GOP administration to solicit donations in hopes of matching the Republican cash grab in the wake of the announcement.

Beneath the fierce response was a sense of delight among Democrats that they got the vice presidential candidate they wanted in Ryan, a staunch fiscal conservative. For months, the Obamacampaign has been trying to tie Romney to Ryan’s Republican House budget proposal, which the president in April called “social Darwinism” that would pit the poor against the wealthy.

Democrats believe Ryan’s ideological views will turn off moderate voters and drive liberals to the polls, especially in Florida, a critical swing state where Obama, in two appearances last month, vilified the congressman’s proposal to partially privatize Medicare. In this way, Democrats say, Ryan provides a natural foil for the president, who has framed the election as a choice between sharply contrasting visions that could fundamentally reshape the nation.
In a statement, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said that Romney has “chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy.”

Obama did not respond to questions shouted by reporters as he left the White House on Saturday afternoon for a trip to Chicago, where he is to attend four fundraising events Sunday. The president’s campaign said that Vice President Biden called Ryan to welcome him to the race, saying he “looked forward to engaging him on the clear choice voters face this November.” The two are scheduled to debate Oct. 11 in Danville, Ky.

Yet the Obama campaign’s rapid response showed it was well-prepared for Ryan. The president’s operatives posted a Web video denouncing Ryan as the “mastermind behind the extreme GOP budget plan,” and they added a new page to the campaign’s Web site mocking the Romney-Ryan partnership as the “Go Back Team,” riffing off the Romney campaign’s labeling of the ticket as “America’s Comeback Team.”

In a fundraising e-mail, Messina wrote: “Our job is to make sure Americans know the truth about what Romney’s choice says about him as a candidate and leader.”

The president’s Democratic allies echoed the campaign’s criticism of Ryan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that Romney’s choice “demonstrates that catering to the tea party and the far right is more important to him that standing up for the middle class.”
Bill Burton of Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that supports Obama, vowed that his organization would shift the focus of its television ads--which have focused exclusively on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital two decades ago--to Ryan and his budget.

“He was the one nominee who could actually do damage to the ticket,” Burton said, acknowledging that he was surprised by Romney’s choice. “Everybody else was fairly neutral. No doubt he will fire up conservatives, but he also comes with so many liabilities from his budget that Romney will come to think he made a sizable mistake attaching himself so closely to Paul Ryan.”

Democrats running in statewide races also jumped on the anti-Ryan bandwagon. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warned in a fundraising e-mail that Ryan will “open the floodgates” of donations from conservatives to Romney.

“Don’t let them use this moment to beat us. Help us keep pace,” the e-mail pleaded.
Tim Kaine, who is engaged in a fierce battle against Republican — and fellow former Virginia governor — George Allen for a Senate seat from that state, sent a fundraising e-mail that tied Allen to the Ryan budget and added: “Even Newt Gingrich called it ‘right-wing social engineering.’ 

Obama has centered his campaign on an appeal to the middle class, emphasizing his belief that the federal government should play a role in investing in critical public needs such as infrastructure, education and health care. Republicans have attacked him for allowing the deficit to grow while pumping money into government programs, such as the stimulus package and the health-care reform bill, that have failed to jump-start the economy.

In a speech in April to the Associated Press, Obama used the Ryan plan as a metaphor for a GOP vision for the country that he said is “antithetical to our entire history” as a land that promises an upward path for the middle class.

“It’s a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism,” Obama said then. “It’s a prescription for decline.”

By Saturday evening, Obama had arrived in Chicago, his Marine One helicopter swooping into his home town and dropping him near Soldier Field. His motorcade then proceeded directly to his campaign headquarters, where the president huddled with senior staff members, plotting the next steps in a campaign entering a new phase.

Obama response to Ryan pick: Harder, Faster, More By Olivier Knox —

abcnews.go.com

President Barack Obama had Paul Ryan on his radar years before Mitt Romney selected the representative from Wisconsin as his running mate. Ryan, the president said, favors "thinly veiled social Darwinism." Further, Obama charged that Ryan dishonestly claims the mantle of deficit hawk when he actually votes for budget-busters as long as they come from his party.

And Team Obama's response to the House Budget Committee Chairman's elevation to potential VP made clear that the Democrat's campaign won't overhaul so much as go into overdrive. Aides argue that Ryan amplifies rather than challenges their core message with just 88 days until the election.

The early attacks are telling: Obama's website repeatedly refers to Ryan's " extreme budget plan" as favoring the rich over the middle class (the president's core argument against Romney). The first line of its biographical sketch reads "Paul Ryan is a career Washington D.C. insider." (Obama has been running in large part against inside-the-Beltway political stalemate, casting the blame on Republicans.)

In an attack everyone in politics saw coming, the site warns Ryan's budget "would turn Medicare into a voucher program, increasing seniors' costs by up to $6,350 per year"—an unusually precise figure seemingly tailored to shock elderly voters in pivotal battlegrounds like Florida, even though his proposal would not affect people currently over 55.

The site also highlights Ryan's opposition to abortion and his vote against legislation aimed at erasing pay discrimination against women. (Obama is counting on his "gender gap" advantage over Romney in November.) The president tweeted a link to the new content to his 18.4 million followers.

Team Obama hopes that these arguments will be enough to reassemble key parts of the coalition that powered his historic 2008 victory while limiting the political damage from the president's sorest vulnerability: An economy still sputtering and weighed down by high unemployment three and a half years after he took office.

The president, who was due to fly home to Chicago for some fundraising before a three-day bus tour in Iowa starting Monday, kept mum after the announcement. But campaign manager Jim Messina hit all of the same notes in a statement emailed to reporters.

Ryan, like Romney, favors "the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy." The Republicans would "end Medicare as we know it." And "Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes," he said.

Behind the scenes, Democrats urged reporters to consider that Ryan voted for the Bush-era tax cuts (which Obama renewed in late 2010) and the war in Iraq—both policies that swelled the deficit. And they also underlined that Ryan voted (with many Democrats) to bail out big banks threatened in the 2007-2008 global financial meltdown and also supported the auto industry bailout. Those policies are frequent targets of conservative hatred—but there's no sign that this will dent their support for Ryan. In fact, the Tea Party Express group cheered the choice.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said it was targeting "70 vulnerable House Republicans" with the message that Ryan's plan "ends Medicare." That's a reference to Ryan's plan to transform the hugely popular health care program for the elderly into a voucher-like system as part of an effort to contain its swelling costs. It's an argument that Obama himself has essentially been making for months—as recently as the July 19 event in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Even in a campaign that has seen Obama and Romney each try to portray the other as History's Greatest Monster (as The Simpsons once dubbed Jimmy Carter,) some of Obama's past clashes with Ryan have had something of a personal tone.

In April 2011, Obama was caught on tape blasting Ryan to donors. In remarks reported by CBS Radio News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, Obama charged that Ryan was "not on the level" when it came to cutting the deficit.

"This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill—but wasn't paid for," Obama said. (Ryan's response: "Rather than building bridges, he's poisoning wells.")

One year later, Obama charged at an Associated Press luncheon that Ryan's budget amounted to " thinly veiled Social Darwinism." (Ryan's response: Obama "has chosen to distort the truth and divide Americans in order to distract from his failed record.")

But for his part, Ryan is no stranger to leading Republican attacks on Obama—his main role as vice presidential nominee and one he has played with relish since the administration's first year. In late 2009, Ryan predicted that defeating the Democrat's health care overhaul would mean "a failed presidency" that had to negotiate with Republicans.

That might make debating Vice President Joe Biden—some three decades senior to the 42-year-old lawmaker—a bit of a letdown.

Biden's strategy? Maybe this could be a preview: Biden calls Ryan "a fine guy."

"He's a bright, handsome guy from the state of Wisconsin. He a fine guy," Biden went on. "But I think his ideas are not nearly as fine as he is a man."