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WSJ: My, What a Smart Pick

Journal calls Ryan pick 'serious'; Krugman says 'dishonest'

By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff

Posted Aug 12, 2012 9:52 AM CDT

(Newser) – Last week, the Wall Street Journal called on Mitt Romney to pick Paul Ryan for his vice presidential runningmate. Now who's crowing about the pick? Why, the Wall Street Journal. The Journal isn't taking credit for the pick, but its editors do view it as a sign of Romney's seriousness at reforming government and his "governing potential." "In choosing the 42-year-old, Mr. Romney has embraced the GOP's reform wing and made it more likely that the election debate will be as substantial as America's current problems," the paper crows.

The Journal also thinks that Ryan is the ideal pick for serious ideas and countering "the same old easy demagoguery." Not everyone is so overjoyed with Ryan, of course. Paul Krugman calls the Romney/Ryan ticket "Galt/Gekko" (as in the Ayn Rand hero and Wall Street villain). Ryan "is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn’t care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest," writes Krugman in his blog at the New York Times. "Of course, this means that he’ll fit in to the Romney campaign just fine."

Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, shake hands during a rally in Ashland, Va., yesterday.
Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, shake hands during a rally in Ashland, Va., yesterday.   (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 118 comments
summerfairy
Aug 13, 2012 5:02 PM CDT
The high mucky mucks at the NYTimes hate Ryan and are already calling him names (how mature) and sliming him.  I am shocked, just shocked.
ERICAIELLO
Aug 13, 2012 8:08 AM CDT
WOW......for a second I thought the headline read....WSJ: My, what a smart prick!
LarryG
Aug 13, 2012 4:16 AM CDT
According to the Congressional Budget Office, ten years after the Ryan plan was enacted, seniors would pay $6,400 per year more for the same health care. One out of every four dollars spent on transportation—which is already underfunded—would be cut. Veterans' benefits would be cut 13 per cent. Young men Paul Ryan voted to send into combat would suffer once more on the home front. Education would be cut, food safety, air traffic control, environmental protection—almost everything that makes us safer, smarter or stronger—would get hammered.How can a budget so brutal not make a dent in the debt? If you have to ask you have not been paying attention. What is the holy grail for princelings like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan? Of course: tax cuts for the rich. The Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers and found that under Romney's proposal, 95 percent of Americans would see their taxes go up by an average of $500, but millionaires would receive an extra $87,000 tax cut. The net result: an $86 billion annual shift in the tax burden away from those making over $200,000 a year and onto those making less.
 

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