Paul Ryan Helped Start the Tea Party with His Crummy Votes

Politico has an article called “Paul Ryan’s Voting Record: Big-Spending Conservatism.” My favorite part is the statement by Amy Kremer, who chairs the Tea Party Express. I’ll take it apart a bit.

I think that he’s somebody who’ll stand up and accept responsibility for previous actions.

Translation: When he’s cornered, he’ll probably issue the typical mealymouthed apology for his big-spending ways. That customary and meaningless political gesture is good enough for the Tea Party Express.

Ryan’s terrible votes are anomalies, Kremer suggests. So his anomalies involve the biggest and worst pieces of spending legislation, and this is all right because he’ll “accept responsibility” for blowing Americans’ money?

More importantly than that, he knows that we’re in serious financial trouble, and he has a grasp on the big picture all the way down to the little details.

He has a grasp of our situation down to the little details, yet he proposes a budget that doesn’t do any cutting. (FOX News: “Fact Check: Ryan Budget Plan Doesn’t Actually Slash the Budget.”)

There is no perfect politician. There are many of them that have had votes that we aren’t happy about. But we were in a different time period then, and those votes are actually what led to this movement being formed.

I’m not sure what “we were in a different time period then” is supposed to mean. I think it means, “Don’t ask me why I’m happy to see on the GOP ticket a guy who in the past did the exact opposite of what I’m saying we should do now. Things were, um, different then.”

But I really like the comment that “those votes” — i.e., the bad votes all politicians have, so why single out poor Paul Ryan? — “are actually what led to this movement being formed.” So really, we should be thanking Paul Ryan.

There’s the Tea Party Express for you.

Flambeaux

Yes, I realize he’s terrible. So is anyone associated with the Establishment. What alternatives exist?
http://twitter.com/kentarch kentarch

Paul Ryan may have started the Tea Party but word on the street is that the Tea Party has been coopted by the Koch Brothers. I understand that a lot of conservatives want to believe that Ryan is different than Obama and Romney but he isn’t. Do you realize that
both Romney and Obama’s biggest donor is Goldman Sachs: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286

Obama and Romney both campaign
on the same issues word for word:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWDJEc92d38

Romneycare mandates abortion. Romney also admitted that he approves
of Obama’s desire to indefinitely detain Americans without trial. Romney
approves of UNCONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1yY3NCiMVQ

Paul Ryan also voted in favor of
the Patriot Act, NDAA, and warrantless wiretapping. Ryan also helped
Obama destroy the enumerated powers in the U.S. government by voting in favor
of ceding the Senate’s power to vet czars to Obama. Ryan approves of a
dictatorship whether it be Obama, Romney, or his own as a VP that could be
President:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2012/roll537.xml
Anonymous

Gary Johnson, Obama, not voting, becoming a politician yourself.
If you think Ryan is an ‘acceptable’ alternative, then Obama is an acceptable alternative.
Flambeaux

From an economic perspective, possibly. But there are other lenses that that make a Romney-Ryan platform far more acceptable than Obama-Anyone.

At the end of the day, I think the Republic is toast, so I really don’t think it matters who wins in November. I’d just prefer to go over the cliff a little slower than Obama will take us.

I wish Gary Johnson, like Ron Paul, actually had a chance. But even if they did, they can’t overhaul the bureaucracy nor change the character of the populace. And that means even a Lib Party victory wouldn’t change matters.
Anonymous

Ha! She thinks Hitler founded the JDL!!
She DUMB!!
Mike

Even if there isn’t any so what? Twice nothing is still nothing.
Mike

Sigh…this kind of thinking never ends does it? Fine. Vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum dumb yet AGAIN. See where it gets you. Twice nothing is STILL nothing.
Flambeaux

You think voting for Humpty-Dumpty is better?
Eric Dondero

Paul Ryan’s got a lifetime 75 NTU. Not too shabby. That’s about 18 shy of Ron Paul’s lifetime NTU. No, Ryan is not a radical libertarian. But a mainstream libertarian, he most certainly is. Thank you Mitt Romney for putting a libertarian on the ticket!
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

We’ll call it Libertarians for TARP, Medicare Part D, and the stupidest war in U.S. history.
David

Libertarians do not vote for all the stuff Tom mentioned, not to mention the Patriot Act, NDAA, CISPA, NCLB, Sarbanes-Oxley, a crummy debt ceiling deal, Davis-Bacon, the auto bailouts, etc. Perhaps if he had only supported one or two of all these things, you could make the case. But he’s supported a whole laundry list of major infringements on liberty, and what does he have to counter it? A budget that increases spending by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade and doesn’t balance for at least thirty years?
Thomas C

Wow. I can’t believe Dondero is showing his face here. Dondero, a disgruntled former Paul staffer who was fired by Paul and does nothing but attack him, while claiming himself to be a libertarian.