Convention junkies can obsess details here!

[Rover]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

It doesn't matter, though. To pick on FNC for example, but true of any Echo Chamber outlet, the people who get their news from those media (plural) will never encounter any cognitive dissonance because either (1) they will never be exposed to a fact check of the speech, or (2) even if they are, their "double-down in the case of being challenged" aversion to facts will insulate them.

A GOP candidate can say, literally, anything he wants in the post-Ailes world of the all-compassing conservative zeitgeist. The followers can check their talk radio or Conservapedia for verification. The other conservatives they talk too will all have identical sources and opinions. It is a perfect closed circle.

Kep that's all fine and dandy but I doubt too many Fox viewers are truly undecided. So I'll reiterate this will work splendidly if the 1988 electorate shows up in Nov 2012. Congressional Republicans, of which Ryan is currently a member, have a huge credibility and likeability gap with the public. Making up easily discredited statements isn't going to endear him any further to the voters.

Seems to me Ryan was trying to fill a void left by Christie. While I didn't hear Christie's speech some of the coverage out of more right leaning outfits was that it was more about him than a critique of Obama (who I'm not sure he ever mentioned by name). Perhaps Ryan felt the need to get the raw meat out there so Romney wouldn't have to.

So, if you look at a race of lets say 47-45%, that doesn't leave a lot of undecideds (8% assuming no libertarian votes). Breaking even on these people still equals a loss. Mittens needs to win them 2-1 to get over the top and I'm not sure anything has happened thus far aside from the boilerplate Ann Romney speech to get him there.

[Kepler]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Kep that's all fine and dandy but I doubt too many Fox viewers are truly undecided.

There are places (I work in one) where Fox is the go-to on the public space TV, just as if it was an actual news network. I wouldn't exactly call most of the people here "Fox viewers" -- they wouldn't TiVo Hannity or whatever cheeseball RNCTV is sponsoring these days. But it does contribute to the general noise pollution in the same way that CNN or ESPN does in other places.

Also, there are no undecideds anywhere, anymore. It's all about getting your voters to the polls and keeping the other guy's at home (or off the rolls). The conventions are homecoming rallies designed to fire people up. Nobody's trying to appeal to the middle because it's a fiction.

[Rover]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Also, there are no undecideds anywhere, anymore. It's all about getting your voters to the polls and keeping the other guy's at home (or off the rolls). The conventions are homecoming rallies designed to fire people up. Nobody's trying to appeal to the middle because it's a fiction.

Disagree with you a little here. I don't think there's a lot of swing voters but to say there's not 5% of the voting population that can be pursuaded to vote either way is a bit of an exaggeration IMHO. Of course turnout if a huge factor but conventions need to do both. Nobody's base is enough to put them over the top solely by itself.

[Bob Gray]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Powerful speech by Ryan. He's a good speaker, and unlike certain other candidates, he talks substance. Which of course means that national headlines avoid covering his speech since they would only headline it if he make some gaff. Glad I'm not Joe Biden having to debate against this guy. Makes me feel a bit better about Romney that he made such a good pick for his VP. Haters can now que up.

[Kepler]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Glad I'm not Joe Biden having to debate against this guy.

By all rights, Ryan should destroy him, but Gore destroyed Dubya in the 2000 debates and that didn't turn out well.

These things don't come down to substance often. Optics are way more important (the famous Nixon-JFK discrepancy between radio and TV viewers always comes to mind).

[Bob Gray]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

By all rights, Ryan should destroy him, but Gore destroyed Dubya in the 2000 debates and that didn't turn out well.

These things don't come down to substance often. Optics are way more important (the famous Nixon-JFK discrepancy between radio and TV viewers always comes to mind).

Gore didn't destroy Bush. Gore wasn't a good enough debater to destroy a pinata. Agreed substance often isn't the determiner or even a major factor.

[Kepler]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Gore wasn't a good enough debater to destroy a pinata.

To win a debate against Dubya, all you had to do was not drool onto the mic. Gore managed that.

Gore did destroy Dubya in debate #1 -- the only time a guy has been schooled worse was Quayle's painful debate against Benson. By the second debate Dubya had memorized his canned responses much better, but in the first one he made Rick Perry look like Thomas Henry Huxley. If it'd been a fight they would have stopped it.

[French Rage]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Not so. Ryan said that, during the 2008 campaign, Obama came to the plant, which was already closed, on a campaign stop, and promised that, if he were elected, the plant would be re-opened. Here we are nearly four years later and the plant is still closed.

Now those are all facts:
> Ryan did say these things:
> the plant was closed in 2008
> Obama did visit the plant during the 2008 campaign
> Obama did say during that visit that the plant would be reopened
> the plant is still closed

Sounds to me like he's saying it was open and then closed after Obama came:

Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major
factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at
that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama
said, ``I believe that if our government is there to support you,
this plant will be here for another 100 years.''
That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that
plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to
this day.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz252jXYk6i

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Sounds to me like he's saying it was open and then closed after Obama came:

What is being said is that it was closed, Obama promised to open it, and it did not open. Obviously I don't know what the government can do in terms of opening those establishments, but the result is: "Obama lied, Capitalism died."

[Kepler]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

You know it's bad when even Fox News calls out Ryan's speech for being "deceiving."

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

[Rover]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

By all rights, Ryan should destroy him, but Gore destroyed Dubya in the 2000 debates and that didn't turn out well.

These things don't come down to substance often. Optics are way more important (the famous Nixon-JFK discrepancy between radio and TV viewers always comes to mind).

Kep, a minor factoid, but that Nixon-JFK thing is a big oversimplification. The sample used to determine that was way, way too small to be of any statistical usefulness, much like you wouldn't take 10 people off the street and use their take on the upcoming election as gospel.

[Rover]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

What is being said is that it was closed, Obama promised to open it, and it did not open. Obviously I don't know what the government can do in terms of opening those establishments, but the result is: "Obama lied, Capitalism died."

Ummm....no, that's not what he's saying at all. You got caught in a lie and are frantically trying to CYA.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Washington - Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan inaccurately said Thursday that President Barack Obama "broke his promise" by failing to keep a General Motors plant open that closed in 2008 - before the Democrat took office.

Ryan, the House Budget committee chairman, recounted the decision by GM to shutter the Janesville Assembly plant in his hometown in June 2008. The last SUV rolled off the line in December 2008.

"I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open," Ryan said at a campaign stop in Ohio Thursday, recounting the fact that his high school friends worked at the GM assembly plant. "One more broken promise. We used to build Tahoes and Suburbans. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."

In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when President George W. Bush was in office.

GM cited the low demand for SUVs and high gas prices during the Bush administration as the reason for closing the plant, but Obama hadn't taken office.

Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested.

"I believe if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years," Obama said.

The Janesville plant, which once employed about 7,000 and had 2,400 workers when GM announced it would close, remains on standby. The plant opened in 1919.

In June 2009, GM considered three sites to locate a small car: its Orion plant in Michigan; Janesville, Wis.; and a Spring Hill, Tenn., plant slated to close in November. GM picked Orion and later reopened Spring Hill.

Ryan broke with his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, by voting for a government bailout of GM and Chrysler LLC in December 2008 without a requirement that the automakers file for bankruptcy first, as Romney had insisted.

dshepardson@detnews.com

(202) 662-8735



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...#ixzz252tR3XBX

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

You know it's bad when even Fox News calls out Ryan's speech for being "deceiving."

Kudlow doesn't like it, either. http://www.cnbc.com/id/48837722

[MinnFan]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

You know it's bad when even Fox News calls out Ryan's speech for being "deceiving."

You mean the contributor to foxnews who previously worked for George Soros at the Center for Community Change? Shocker

[Rover]

Re: Convention junkies can obsess details here!

Not good to have a reputation as a BS artist. That's what killed Gore more than anything else. Serial exaggerator I think was the exact term that was stuck to him.