Quote: Instead, what the Ryan speech delivered was a field day for fact-checkers among the journalists covering the conclave and an unintended bonanza for Democrats.
Sure, the GOP delegates loved it all. But they’re not the audience Ryan and Mitt Romney need; they’ve already got them, presumably. They need undecided independents and wavering Democrats. But it’s doubtful that Ryan’s rhetoric, once put through the fact-check wringer, will do much to win them over.
For starters, there’s his now widely debunked claim that President Obama oversaw the shutdown of an auto plant in his Wisconsin hometown. Trouble is, the plant was shuttered in 2008 and Obama didn’t take office until Jan. 20, 2009. How inconvenient!
Consider a couple of his other whoppers. Obama, he said, will take some $700 billion out of Medicare to help fund the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. It’s dastardly, Ryan implied. But he neglected to mention that his own budget pulls almost exactly the same amount from Medicare. Just an oversight, right?
He also laid into Obama over the president’s failure to embrace the Simpson-Bowles commission proposal for dealing with the deficit. A presidential lack of leadership, Ryan charged, with some justification.
But his criticism would have had more bite if he’d acknowledged that he, too, took a walk on the Simpson-Bowles proposal. And he was a member of the commission. (Ryan liked its spending cuts, but was frightened away by tea party opposition to its tax increases. Another congressional profile in courage by another self-proclaimed reformer.)
There’s more. Some of Ryan’s most telling political points involved the burst of federal spending under Obama. Actually, Ryan knows something about big federal spending and borrowing. Almost without exception, he voted for the explosion of spending under President George W. Bush, including the now-controversial tax cuts, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the huge prescription-drug expansion of Medicare, even TARP, the bank bailout now considered almost treason by some in the GOP.
Paul Ryan wages war on facts | NJ.com Quote: Paul Ryan's campaign walked back comments the VP nominee made about running a marathon.
"I had a two hour and fifty-something" marathon, Ryan said last week an interview. "I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore."
But the Ryan campaign confirmed to Runner's World that he has only run one marathon, the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, which he finished in just over 4 hours.
"The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three," Ryan said in a prepared statement. "If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."
The admission comes after wide speculation that Ryan had exaggerated his marathon time. Running a sub-3 hour marathon means averaging under 7 minutes per mile for the entire race, a possible but extremely impressive feat. As the New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson put it, "It’s the difference between racing and running."
This isn't the first time Ryan has come under fire this week for stretching the truth. His RNC speech was chastised for misleading claims about Medicare and the 2008 closing of a Wisconsin plant.
Paul Ryan: Marathon Time Claim Not True
Last edited by jogiba; 09-02-2012 at 05:55 AM.