As Jeffrey Anderson notes below, Paul Ryan is getting attention–a lot of it in the form of Democratic attacks–as he prepares to deliver the GOP response to Obama’s state of the union address tonight. This is to be expected. What’s unusual is the way some news stories are trying to portray these attacks as new.
“Budget ax-man Ryan is Dems’ new villain,” blares the front-page headline of today’s copy of The Hill newspaper. Indeed, reports the New York Times, Ryan has “emerged” as “the latest chew toy among Democrats. They spent Monday beginning a campaign to portray him as the architect of fiscal policies that they view as unwise and hope will prove unpopular among voters, including plans to partially privatize Social Security and Medicare.”
Um, Democratic demagogic attacks on Ryan were “beginning” a year ago–and really haven’t let up since. As Matthew Continetti wrote on February 5, 2010:
Since then, lefty pundits like Paul Krugman and Katrina Vanden Heuval have joined the fight against Ryan–and lost. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee went after GOP candidates who embraced any part of Ryan’s Roadmap. But those Republicans won on Election Day. The real question, then, is: why will the new round of Democratic attacks on Ryan will work now when they’ve failed in the past?
And where’s Chuck Schumer’s or Barack Obama’s plan to balance the budget and eliminate the debt? They’ve had a year to attack Ryan’s plan. Isn’t it about time they showed us theirs?
