The selection of Paul Ryan as Vice President on the Republican ticket will, I believe, prove to be historical in a wider sense than just the politics of the coming election. Ryan’s selection clearly and decisively makes the next election a national referendum. That’s assuming that Republican tampering with voter ID laws and even possibly the voting machines themselves doesn’t transform the election into more of a coup d’état for the combined forces of big oil, corporations, and millionaires.
The “Ryan Budget” is now something Mitt Romney will literally be standing next to, and embracing. That means that the ‘philosophy’ of right wing politics that argues that you make government smaller and less costly by cutting off federal aid to the poor and elderly and underprivileged and schools and women is now officially Romney’s policy. Standing even further back we can see, thanks to our new RyanEyes glasses, Romney’s vision for America: To make the government of the United States a tool of oil and corporations and to economically choke the American middle class into becoming Chinese assembly line workers.
That statement might appear to have some preposterous dimensions. So let’s just push it up against what we already know to be true.
Romney doesn’t want us to see his tax returns. He’s stalling so that a team of the most expensive accountants on earth will have time to try and fix whatever it is he knows we must not know. We know that he lied about his time with Bain to hide his destruction of American jobs for money. We know that his love of America causes him to keep money in off-shore accounts. We know he pays a lesser tax rate because, again, he loves America. We know that he will say something as wildly illogical as “We’re going to get rid of Planned Parenthood” because he thinks some folks want to hear that and he apparently doesn’t understand how videotape works; that when you say something asinine about where the cookies came from, people will later play the tape back.
Some of this would simply contribute to a view of Romney as an inept dupe of the powers behind him, as was George W. Bush. But now the placement of Ryan next to Romney brings so much crystal clarity that Romney need say almost nothing, dopey or otherwise, from now until November. Ryan will do the talking and as numerous videos on the Internet reveal, when protestors try to be heard Ryan will have security remove them. In his first week as VP candidate, Ryan already brought out news cameras when his security people refused to let young people with tickets enter a rally in Colorado.
The greatest benefit Ryan will bring will be to those of us who have until now quietly feared the right-leaning of American voters. Because nominating Ryan means it’s no longer hypothetical: America will be able to put into the White House the very people that are destroying our country and gaining power due to a heady mixture of emotional appeals, feelings of overwhelming powerlessness, and retrograde religiosity. If voters actually believe they want repression and a rollback of progress and individual freedoms such as a woman’s right to control her own body, they will be able to vote for that this November.
This clarity of choice, however, comes with some problematic features. Their side, of course, has enormous resources. The Citizens United decision means that messages that bend truth until it audibly snaps will flood American homes with obfuscation rivaling what Orwell predicted. It has been observed that, with a smart guy sitting next to him, Romney appears smarter himself. Worse, he appears more confident.
Again assuming that the November election is legit and without the suspected tampering of 2000 and 2004, Ryan allows us to quit hedging. Now, we can just say “No.” We surrendered the White House to oil and war profiteering for eight years before we woke the hell up. We keep thinking that Roe v Wade will always stand because it would be archaic and backwards to repeal it. We never expected candidates for the White House to assert that the jobs we need are all in drilling for more oil and worsening climate change. If we want it, it’s here: Our chance to stop the sale of America for money.
And there’s one other thing that this Romney-Ryan ticket is pleased to stand with: Old school racism. Romney ads running in Colorado where I worked this past week state that Obama repealed the work requirement from welfare. He did not. But if you want to bring back that whole ugly mentality that Reagan exploited about food stamps, you have to lie. In truth, the racial demographics of food stamps are not what they want people to think, but… they don’t care. You and I already know what certain people mean when they say “Anybody but Obama.” Paul Ryan’s addition to the Republican ticket tells us all we need to know and guides us to a choice that will repel the corporate takeover of our country. And that will make us more whole and keep America moving into the future.
