Romney Has To Defend Ryan Budget Now

Nice blog entry on Huffington Post by Mike Lux, entitled "Reluctant Warrior" paints a pathetic picture of the Paul Ryan budget. Mitt Romney has embraced it, and now he will have to defend it. Mitt has gone over...way over to the Right side. Every day it gets crazier.

Lux writes,

The Ryan budget is the most radical, repeal-the-20th Century budget document I have read in 30 years of politics, and Romney's and the entire Republican Party's embrace of it makes it quite literally impossible to Etch A Sketch anything away. They are stuck with the consequences of Romney having been forced to be the lap dog for the further and further and further right wing Republican primary electorate. What Romney's political operatives are fantasizing about is quietly wrapping up the nomination and then moving with stunning speed to the center so swing voters can live with him again, but it won't work. It can't work: Romney's long history as a flip-flopper which makes the Etch A Sketch strategy way too obvious, his right wing base' knee jerk opposition to any hints of moderation makes it impossible for him to drift any distance away from them, and mostly importantly the Romney-Ryan radical budget makes the Etch A Sketch strategy a more epic fantasy than The Lord of the Rings (although not nearly as well written).

Even more than all the pandering right-wing speeches and debates all through the primary, the Romney-Ryan budget forces the nominee Romney into full-out, right-wing warrior territory, no matter how reluctant he is. Having embraced it, he now has to defend it: the Medicare death spiral; the end of defined Medicare benefits, and ever-increasing out-of-pocket costs for seniors; the end of guaranteed nursing home coverage for moderate-income seniors; money slashed from student loans and children's health care and student loans and public schools; the drastic Ayn Randian cuts to all other domestic programs; the wild giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations in ever greater tax cuts -- more tax cuts for the wealthy than there are program cuts in the first 10 years; the walking away from any tightening of the defense budget. Speaking of fantasy, this is it, the all-time fantasy budget of every Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Ayn Rand apostle, the wild-eyed dream budget for every defense contractor and oil company exec and Wall Street banker. Check out the numbers just so you know I am not exaggerating: I am not.