Voters Seriously Don't Like Ryan-Romney's Serious Medicare Plan

      The WSJ editorial page was at it again this morning, with Daniel Hanniger in his WONDERLAND column oohing and aahing over the seriousness Paul Ryan and the seriousness of Mitt Romney in choosing him for the ticket.

       If you've read Hanniger's column much you understand why he calls it WONDERLAND. Certainly he's dreaming with his claim that Ryan had brought any kind of seriousness to the discussion over the budget or the future of Medicare.

      In fact, Ryan has followed Romney is vowing to tell us all about the budget after the election. As far as Medicare goes, he no less than Romney has done nothing but tried to "fight Democrats to a tie"-as that RSCC video instructs them to do-by lying about the President cutting Medicare by $716 billion dollars.

      Ryan has followed Romney lockstep on everything down to only releasing 2 years of his taxes-actually this still puts him about 1 and a half years ahead of what Romney has released so far.

      We've heard lots of talk meant to convince us that Ryan has given Romney something he didn't have before. Yet the actual numbers show he's gotten less bounce out of Ryan than is usual for the Veep announcement.

      The one thing they keep repeating is the idea that Ryan has given Romney a shot in the arm in Wisconsin. Time will tell though I suspect this is being oversold. Plus they aren't even discussing right now the other edge of the sword-how many points will Ryan cost Romney in other states turned off by Ryan?

      Broadly, Americans do not like the Ryan Medicare privatization plan-as pointed out before this privatizes Medicare for everyone, whether under or over 55-or 55 on the nose. After all, if everyone under 55 is voucherized where will the payments for Medicare come from so that there will still be any Medicare in a couple of years?

     "A new Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS poll finds that President Obama has the clear political advantage on Medicare — and that the issue has rocketed to the forefront of the conversation:

After more than a week of frenzied campaigning on the issue, Medicare ranks as the third-most crucial issue to likely voters in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin — behind the economy and health care, according to new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polls of the three swing states. The Republican proposal to retool the program a decade from now is widely disliked.
Roughly 6 in 10 likely voters in each state want Medicare to continue providing health insurance to older Americans the way it does today; fewer than a third of those polled said Medicare should be changed in the future to a system in which the government gives the elderly fixed amounts of money to buy health insurance or Medicare insurance, as Mr. Romney has proposed. And Medicare is widely seen as a good value: about three-quarters of the likely voters in each state said the benefits of Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers.
[...] About 60 percent of independent voters in the three states support keeping Medicare as it is today, as do at least 8 in 10 Democrats. Republicans are closely divided on the issue in Florida and Ohio, but in Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan’s home state, a majority of Republicans support changing it along the lines he has proposed

     http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/08/poll-obama-has-advantage-on-medicare-132898.html

     So, a few more Republicans support it than don't in Wisconsin. Not the majority of Wisconites. Everywhere else it's a total loser. It amazes me again and again how the Republicans manage to make ideas the centerpiece of their campaign even their own supporters don't like.