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2012 VP Debate Analysis: Paul Ryan’s Best Moments

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paul ryan debate

Paul Ryan needed to accomplish several objectives in this debate. First, he needed to appear intelligent, competent, confident and “presidential” — which he most certainly did. Second, he needed to clarify the Romney positions and get out the major Republican talking points to emphasize the contrast between the two parties. Thirdly, he needed to maintain the momentum picked up from Romney’s debate performance last week. If Ryan felt nervous or a little out of his league going up against “master debater” Joe Biden, he certainly didn’t show it. Here’s a look at some of Paul Ryan’s best debate moments…

Embassy Terrorism!

  • Recent reports that the White House knew there were threats to our embassies in Libya, but did nothing to beef up security was a smart point to bring up to hack away at the administration’s credibility on the foreign policy front — which is considered their strong suit.

“When you take a look at what has happened just in the last few weeks, they sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video. It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.

He went to the U.N. and in his speech at the U.N. he said six times – he talked about the YouTube video.

look, if we’re hit by terrorists we’re going to call it for what it is, a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn’t we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi, a place where we knew that there was an Al Qaida cell with arms?

This is becoming more troubling by the day. They first blamed the YouTube video. Now they’re trying to blame the Romney-Ryan ticket for making this an issue.”

Zinger!

  • Paul Ryan added a bit of humor by alluding to Joe’s tendency to put his foot in his mouth, which caused a solid chuckle from the crowd. It was the right comment at the right time to ratchet down the intensity a touch.

“I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way.”

It’s Irish!

  • When Biden was speaking in obtuse terms when he said “This is a bunch of stuff.” When Martha Raddatz pushed him to explain what he meant by “bunch of stuff,” Ryan jumped in and clarified, “It’s Irish” — which gave everyone a laugh. Biden himself took up the joke and agreed. Humor helps boost Ryan’s likability, especially during such a tense exchange.

Predict & Spin!

  • Paul Ryan did an effective job heading off a possible attack from his opponent. It showed that he did his homework and was able to spin and clarify the “voucher program” argument before it even arose.

“They haven’t put a credible solution on the table. He’ll tell you about vouchers. He’ll say all these things to try and scare people. Here’s what we’re saying: give younger people, when they become Medicare eligible, guaranteed coverage options that you can’t be denied, including traditional Medicare. Choose your plan, and then Medicare subsidizes your premiums, not as much for the wealthy people, more coverage for middle-income people, and total out-of-pocket coverage for the poor and the sick.”

Backbone!

  • The interruptions from Biden were getting a little out of hand, so it was a welcome relief when Ryan finally spoke his mind. “I know you’re under a lot of duress to make up lost ground, but I think people would be better served if we don’t keep interrupting each other.”

Attack!

  • “This is what politicians do when they don’t have a record to run on,” Ryan said, hitting one of his major talking points. He quoted Obama from 2008 numerous times, which is an effective debate strategy.

“Barack Obama four years ago running for president said if you don’t have any fresh ideas, use stale tactics to scare voters. If you don’t have a good record to run on, paint your opponent as someone people should run from.”

Tax Reform!

  • Paul Ryan hit his stride when talking about the need for comprehensive tax reform. He threw out a lot of very rich, compelling stats about where the Democratic plan falls short of making any substantial headway. He also directed part of his message right at Middle Class voters at home, which was very attention-grabbing. Comparing the corporate tax rate in the United States to other countries overseas is another compelling argument Ryan makes — to which Biden had no defense. Check mate!

“Look, if you taxed every person and successful business making over $250,000 at 100 percent, it would only run the government for 98 days. If everybody who paid income taxes last year, including successful small businesses, doubled their income taxes this year, we’d still have a $300 billion deficit. You see? There aren’t enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending. And so the next time you hear them say, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll get a few wealthy people to pay their fair share,’ watch out, middle class, the tax bill’s coming to you.

That’s why we’re saying we need fundamental tax reform. Let’s take a look at it this way. Eight out of 10 businesses, they file their taxes as individuals, not as corporations. And where I come from, overseas, which is Lake Superior, the Canadians, they dropped their tax rates to 15 percent. The average tax rate on businesses in the industrialized world is 25 percent, and the president wants the top effective tax rate on successful small businesses to go above 40 percent. Two-thirds of our jobs come from small businesses. This one tax would actually tax about 53 percent of small-business income. It’s expected to cost us 710,000 jobs. And you know what? It doesn’t even pay for 10 percent of their proposed deficit spending increases.”

Russian Relations!

  • Ryan hit a touchy subject when he brought up what many would call the failed Obama goal of “the Russian Reset.” Biden had no comment whatsoever on the strained relations with Russia. His irritation at the slaughter of Syrian civilians and his frustration of allowing the UN to be in the driver’s seat on this issue was very convincing.

“We wouldn’t be outsourcing our foreign policy to the United Nations giving Vladimir Putin veto power over our efforts to try and deal with this issue. He’s vetoed three of them. Hillary Clinton went to Russia to try and convince them not to do so. They thwarted her efforts. She said they were on the wrong side of history. She was right about that. This is just one more example of how the Russia reset’s not working.

And so where are we? After international pressure mounted, the President Obama said Bashar Assad should go. It’s been over a year. The man has slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people. And more foreign fighters are spilling into this country. So the longer this has gone on, the more people, groups like Al Qaida are going in. We could have more easily identified the free Syrian army, the freedom fighters, working with our allies, the Turks, the Qataris, the Saudis, had we had a better plan in place to begin with working through our allies. But, no, we waited for Kofi Annan to try and come up with an agreement through the U.N. That bought Bashar Assad time.We gave Russia veto power over our efforts through the U.N. And meanwhile about 30,000 Syrians are dead.”

Abortion!

  • Paul Ryan had a wonderful personal story regarding his faith and abortion. It was touching to hear him talk about seeing his baby girl’s ultrasound and noticing how they could see their “little bean’s heartbeat” at just 7 weeks. He then very effectively painted the Democrats as a party that has strayed from their own founding principles to a more extreme position in this arena.

“The Democratic Party used to say they wanted it to be safe, legal and rare. Now they support it without restriction and with taxpayer funding. Taxpayer funding in Obamacare, taxpayer funding with foreign aid. The vice president himself went to China and said that he sympathized and wouldn’t second guess their one child policy of forced abortions and sterilizations. That to me is pretty extreme.”

Channeling Reagan!

  • Ryan finished up his debate really strong. He saved a whole slew of gems to level a very pointed attack against President Obama at the tail-end of the 90-minute debate. This is where he really reached out to the independents and disillusioned Americans who maybe voted for Obama in ’08 but felt let down. He sounded rational and well-studied. By comparison, Biden’s closing statement was not nearly as compelling. Without explicitly quoting Reagan, he channeled the spirit of his famous debate query: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” Strategically, that’s an excellent argument to make if they want to win this election in November.

“Look at all the string of broken promises. If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Try telling that to the 20 million people who are projected to lose their health insurance if Obamacare goes through or the 7-point million – 7.4 million seniors who are going to lose it.

Or remember when he said this: I guarantee if you make less than $250,000, your taxes won’t go up. Of the 21 tax increases in Obamacare, 12 of them hit the middle class.

Or remember when he said health insurance premiums will go down $2,500 per family, per year? They’ve gone up $3,000, and they’re expected to go up another $2,400.

Or remember when he said, ‘I promise by the end of my first term I’ll cut the deficit in half in four years’? We’ve had four budgets, four trillion-dollar deficits.

A debt crisis is coming. We can’t keep spending and borrowing like this. We can’t keep spending money we don’t have. Leaders run to problem to fix problems. President Obama has not even put a credible plan on the table in any of his four years to deal with this debt crisis. I passed two budgets to deal with this. Mitt Romney’s put ideas on the table.

We’ve got to tackle this debt crisis before it tackles us. The budget office, ‘Can we see the plan?’ They sent us to the press Congressional Budget Office, ‘Tell us what President Obama’s plan is to prevent a debt crisis.” They said, “It’s a speech, we can’t estimate speeches.’ You see, that’s what we get in this administration – speeches – but we’re not getting leadership.”

“…The choice is clear: a stagnant economy that promotes more government dependency or a dynamic, growing economy that promotes opportunity and jobs.”



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