Ryan is a Smooth, Charismatic Liar

As Paul Ryan strolled confidently to the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, my thoughts jumped immediately back to 2004.  I had the exact same thought when now-President Barack Obama opened his mouth and uttered his first line from his Democratic National Convention keynote address that year.

“He certainly LOOKS the part.”

Ryan’s speech was well-crafted and well-delivered – just like Obama’s was eight long years ago.  Ryan has an easy-to-hear cadence to his delivery – just like Obama does when he is working from a script. 

But there was a big difference in the two young politicians and their approach to the opportunity they enjoyed. 

Obama chose to inspire a more unified country.

“There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.”  Now, true, Obama’s speech was not an acceptance speech; Ryan’s was.  Perhaps it is tradition for the keynote to be lofty, more of a view from a higher altitude.  But whatever Obama chose to include in his remarks as true were, well, true.

Not so the appealing Mr. Ryan.  In an article on today’s Salon.com by Alex Seitz-Wald, Paul Ryan: The definitive fact-check , the writer lists nine different instances of Paul Ryan telling a bald-faced lie. 

The closing of the GM plant in Janesville, WI, his hometown?  Yes, it closed, but it closed in 2008, before Obama even took office.

I remember sitting bolt upright last night as I listened to Ryan slyly tried to attribute the downgrading of the country’s credit rating by Standard and Poors to Obama’s “failed policies.”  I didn’t have to read it anywhere;  I remembered how the Republicans in Congress held the country’s debt ceiling hostage – and so did Standard and Poor's.

Ryan said he and Romney would create 12 million jobs if voted into office.  Yeah?  Raise your hand if you believe that to be even possible.

Ryan: “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak.” 

Oh really?  Then why do the majority of your proposed spending cuts involve programs designed to aid the poor, Mr. Ryan? 

I spent quite a bit of my life in Wisconsin.  I went to Ripon College for four years, graduated and took a management training job at A. O. Smith Corporation in Milwaukee.  I lived there five more years.  I met dozens of Wisconsinites who were good and honorable people.  My husband-at-the-time was executive-assistant to Milwaukee’s mayor Henry W. Maier for many years, so politicians were not unknown to us.

While in college I became friends with young men and women from all over the state of Wisconsin, most of whom were Republicans (or at least their parents were. Civil rights and Vietnam changed a lot of my classmates’ political views forever,)  Paul Ryan would have been a BMOC at Ripon, had he been there at the time. There were many Paul Ryan types on campus and they were my friends.  Good-looking, athletic and bright was a winning combination there, too.

Paul Ryan has done an injustice to all the good people in Wisconsin by resorting to out and out lies in order to cajole voters away from President Obama.  The Wisconsinites I know, many of whom I love, are not deceitful.  They are not so ambitious that they would purposely spread falsehoods about other good and honorable people, just to foster their own agendas.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney ought to be ashamed of themselves.