Nice try, Paul Ryan. You're a political liar.

Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week sparked controversy in the media, most of which I would agree is his fault.

His lies ranged from saying the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan, which he absolutely has, to blaming President Barack Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant, which didn’t happen during his presidency.

And that whole thing about Obama being the center of America’s credit downgrade last summer, even though the credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s said the GOP’s refusal to raise taxes was mostly to blame?

Did he think we were going to magically forget what happened a year ago?

While Ryan’s address was filled to the brim with lies and deceit, but the issue extends beyond what the VP hopeful said to the party Ryan represented when he gave that speech.

If his speech meant anything, it was that the Republican Party is stooping to outright lies to oust Obama.

For proof, we need to look only at the 2008 RNC. In her speech, then-vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin had choice words to say about then-presidential candidate Obama.

She accused him of wanting to “give you more orders from Washington” and “take more of your money.”

While I wouldn’t use the words she did, at least there was truth in what she said. Obama campaigned for a larger governmental presence, and he had a plan for tax
reform.

These are what we in the business call facts. Facts twisted toward an agenda, but facts nonetheless.

What went wrong with this election season’s GOP?

The Republican Party isn’t stupid. There’s no way Ryan and his speech writers could have blocked the memory of stubbornly refusing to negotiate about tax reform last year.

And the GM plant gaffe? What am I supposed to believe, that they forgot Obama came into his presidency a month after the plant shut down due to high gas prices during Bush’s presidency?

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the president at the moment. Actually, his involvement in the accidental arming of Mexican drug cartels last spring has pretty much booted me off the Obama train.

But deceiving the American people to bring him down is completely unacceptable.
I understand there is a certain truth-tweaking that happens in politics, and I know Obama is certainly guilty of it. But blatantly lying to trick voters is disgusting.

I can only hope that the public haranguing that Ryan’s speech catalyzed has taught them what most of us learned in preschool: Lying to get your way is wrong.


--kevsjack@indiana.edu