Paul Ryan is still stuck in the same
old rabbit hole.
Apparently,
Rep. Paul Ryan missed the outcome of last November’s presidential election. Oh,
wait — wasn’t he on the ballot in that election as Mitt Romney’s running mate?
Well,
yes, but less than five months later, the Wisconsin Republican seems to have
forgotten that he and the Mittster were soundly rejected.
Maybe
the trauma of losing big — including failing to win a majority of the votes
cast in his own hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin — has his memory slipping.
Whatever
the cause, it’s embarrassing to see him now trotting out the very same Republican budget proposal that he wrote last year and put at the
center of the Romney-Ryan presidential campaign — the same nauseating budget
extremism that induced the great majority of Americans to throw up their hands.
Ryan
recently headlined a Washington media event for the re-release of this bucket
of right-wing hash. It includes turning Medicare into a “WeDon’tCare”
privatized voucher scheme that would deliver seniors into the tender clutches
of giant insurance corporations, forcing the elderly to pay more for less.
Also,
to save the super-rich from even the slightest tax increase, Ryan again served
up a mess of cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and other vital programs for the
poor, while simultaneously jacking up the tax burden on both the working and
middle classes.
Then,
to make his package even more odious to the general public, he cluelessly
re-issued the far right’s cry to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Hello, Paul,
it’s reality calling: Obama thoroughly thumped you and Willard on this issue last year. Remember?
And
since the election, Obama’s signature health care reform has grown in
popularity. Several Republican governors are now seeing the political light and
embracing it.
Maybe
it’s time for his family and friends to pull the gentleman from Janesville out
of the rabbit hole where he’s gotten stuck.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He's also editor of the
populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org