What is OFA worried about with the Paul Ryan choice by Mitt Romney? See the above attack video constructed from a range of Democratic ops hitting the Ryan policy wonkery over these last years. Ryan's sin, according to The Democrats, is that he regards the unfunded Federal medical care mandates of $38 Trillion to be weak-minded planning by the U.S. Congress and the present Executive. In sum, Ryan says again and again, (see below at 5:12) that the ACA and the Obama budgets of the last three years are unserious game-playing. OFA now goes to work to restate this case in the sharply threatening. The Democrats argue not that Ryan is wrong about unfunded mandates, but rather that Ryan's plan to reorganize the Federal budget so that what is promised can be paid for in a rational fashion requires the promises to be jettisoned and replaced by limits. OFA's scary way to speak against the Ryan logic is to say that Ryan will cut programs for the lame, the halt, the blind, the poor, the young, the old. Indeed, any effort to reduce the promises made by Congress the last eighty years will affect everyone, every family, the unborn and the next century. This is all logical and obvious. OFA is now in a position so that in denying Ryan, it must at the same time acknowledge that OFA does not address the unfunded mandates. Raising taxes on the rich, raising taxes on millionaires to 99%, does not even begin the conversation. Also, it is difficult to figure how OFA makes baby-faced choirboy Ryan of Janesville into an ogre coming to steal from your kids. What is more fun is to consider that Ryan is the Deerslayer, just as the original, Natty Bumppo of Fenimore Cooper's genius. Guileless, earnest, sharpshooting, chivalrous, matter-of-factly the frontier hero. When asked if the decision to join the ticket was easy, Ryan responded with pure Natty Bumppo certainty: (see Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed): "It was, it was. We've got to save the country..."
a. k. a. Hawkeye, Natty Bumppo, The Scout, La Longue Carabine, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder
Ryan the Deerslaying Wonk.
See the below C-Span clip from the February 2010 policy debate at the Blair House just prior to the Democratic majority passing the ACA. Ryan addresses POTUS Obama directly about the unfunded mandates. POTUS is not happy. My supposition is that the look on POTUS is much more candidly what OFA now sees as the Ryan threat. Deerslayer is sober, forthright, convincing, and, if there is guile, it is surprisingly hard to find in the rapid-fire presentation. "...because we agree the status quo is unsustainable. It's bankrupting families..." Also, Ryan can talk growth with the Federal budget in mind, and OFA cannot talk growth with anything in mind. There is the additional consideration that Mitt Romney's choice of Deerslayer as a running mate means that Romney understands a deal about myth-making. Being a Mormon is in part about being children of the frontier, going West to take the risks of a savage landscape without a Plan B. The Romney pattern these last years of Bain and Massachusetts and electioneering for the GOP nomination has been caution, risk-aversion, quiet insider authority. By choosing a Deerslayer, Mr. Romney now shows the George Romney part of himself, the bold actor in the wilderness of American failures. If Ryan is Deerslayer, does that make Mr. Romney into the author of the Leatherstocking Tales, Fenimore Cooper?