GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan took some inspiration from a surprising source as he channeled his best 2008 Barack Obama during Thursday night’s debate. “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone to run from,” Ryan said several times, echoing the exact words that President Obama used during his first presidential campaign.
While this phrase was coined by Obama to describe the 2008 McCain-Palin GOP ticket, it much more aptly describes the current Democratic ticket. High nationwide unemployment signaling a broken 2009 promise about the effects of the president’s stimulus plan is only one of the many failures this ticket is trying to run from.
“You have a president who ran for president on hope and change who has now turned his campaign into attack, blame and defame,” Ryan said, hitting the nail on the head. Obama’s record has been called into question and made it difficult for the Democrats to campaign without a leg on which to stand.
Between mentions of Big Bird, a lying foreign policy debacle in Libya, skipping UN meetings to appear on talk shows such as “The View”, and 104 rounds of golf logged during his first term coupled with 23 million Americans unemployed, Ryan’s recycled Obama phrase about a “record to run on” rings more true than ever.
