I’m listening to Paul Ryan take it to him at the Heritage Foundation. I’d like to see him debate Obama instead of Biden. The Biden debate will probably have to be called for a mercy rule.
[Update early afternoon]
Katrina Trinko has some of the transcript:
Say things like this, and our opponents will quickly accuse you of being, quote, “anti-government.” President Obama frames the debate this way because, here again, it’s the only kind of debate he can win – against straw-man arguments.
No politician is more skilled at striking heroic poses against imaginary adversaries. Nobody is better at rebuking nonexistent opinions. Barack Obama does this all the time, and in this campaign we are calling him on it.
The President is given to lectures on all that we owe to government, as if anyone who opposes his reckless expansion of federal power is guilty of ingratitude and rank individualism.
More at the link.
[Bumped]
Last year, Ryan said this of Obama:
“I think the president has become a pyromaniac in a field of straw men. I think what he wants to do is set up those of us on the other side of the aisle as some caricature and assign policies to us that we don’t have and then defeat those arguments.”
Obama is a legend in his own mind.
Was that a GREAT speech or WHAT?!!
I’m waiting for Ryan to be able to run for POTUS, after all, he’s well spoken, clean and not Barack Obama!
Great speech, kid! Don’t get cocky. /hansolo
Yeah, that’s why the Dems spend so much time and effort screaming “RACIST!” at their opponents. It’s better than trying to argue based on the issues, or their policies, or the character of their candidates.
“Hey, what about that 8% (well, really over 10% when you include people who have stopped looking for jobs) unemployment?”
“RACIST!”
“Dude, the Muslim Brotherhood just murdered one of our ambassadors!”
“RACIST!”
“Since QE 1 and 2 have gone so poorly, why are y’all going ahead with QE3?”
“RACIST!”
“Does it say a little about Obama’s character that he is more concerned with campaigning than about the assault on American embassies? Does it say anyting about his followers that they think this is okay?”
“RACIST!”
Everything becomes racist, and no answers are necessary.
…but, what’s their point? It can’t just be that disagreeing with Obama or his policies means we hate black people? Can it?
“We have no logical argument, so we have to yell -something-. We picked the most evocative thing we could come up with because SQUIRREL!!! was trademarked.”
Nancy Pelosi’s ‘Gavelwalk’ pretty much gave the game away. Entire group of Congressional leaders and CBC members walk as a group right through the agitated “H8TRS” of the Tea Party. They -all- have their smartphones out recording.
The claim -afterwards- is that “They yelled n-word at me! And I’m a civil rights -hero-!!!”
1) There -is- Tea Party video, you can hear a lot of people yelling, it’s pretty darn close … and no one yelled racist crap.
2) -NONE- of the CBC videos were -ever- released, even with a $100,000 bounty by Breitbart.
The press is going to call you racist for no damn reason, and even if it’s -just- the useful idiots that buy it, that’s fine with the press.
Mark Steyn says it best:
“As a Canadian, I’m interested to see that America has belatedly adopted the divided responsibilities of the Westminster system. Proceeding from the Pimp with the Limp show to Letterman to Beyoncé and back again, Barack Obama makes a perfectly adequate (if somewhat cheesy and downmarket) ceremonial queen.”