John Hayward is dealing with the Paul Ryan is a liar meme being propagated by the Obama administration and their willing accomplices in the media:
... both of the key factual points made by Paul Ryan are true: Obama promised the plant would remain
open if he were placed in charge of the government, but it didn’t last a year beyond the beginning of his Administration. If you want to be extremely rigid in your analysis of Ryan’s remarks, you could say that he was slightly off about the elapsed time between Obama makingthe promise to keep the Janesville plant open, and the precise day upon which it ceased operations: it was 1 year, 2 months, and 10 days, so it lasted slightly over a year, but Ryan said it “didn’t last another year.” If you run around and bellow that this is an example of Paul Ryan “lying,” normal people will correctly conclude that you are psychotic.
Hilariously, PolitiFact tries to claim Ryan’s comments about the Janesville plant were “false” because Obama only said he “believed” the plant could be kept open by a government run in line with his philosophy… and even though PolitiFact admits that most people attending the speech took this as a promise by Obama, one writer at the Detroit News interpreted it to mean Obama was merely saying he thought the plant should be “viable,” so that’s “not quite the same thing as pledging to keep the Janesville plant open.”
In other words, you have to judge Obama’s speech with the very same benefit of the doubt you refuse to allow Paul Ryan, in order to conclude that Ryan’s not telling the truth. Every single one of Paul Ryan’s words matter; none of Obama’s do. That sounds like a good reason to vote for Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.
What remains is the inference between Ryan’s factually accurate statements. He did not claim, or imply, that Obama actively shut down the plant. He’s faulting Obama for promising to keep it open, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Could Obama have made good on that promise, and kept the Janesville plant open?
As a practical matter of fiscal reality, perhaps not – it would be necessary to dig through all of the business decisions GM made, during the period before Obama appeared in Janesville to give his campaign speech, and analyze them carefully to determine if continuing any sort of long-term production at this particular facility was feasible. But shouldn’t Obama have done that research, before making a misleading commitment to over-ride the decisions of GM management?
And let’s not forget that Obama has done plenty of things that defy fiscal reality, such as ObamaCare. Obama most certainly could have directed General Motors to keep the Janesville plant open, and provided the necessary subsidies, if he wanted to. This is the President who claimed the power to declare whether Congress was in session during particular hours of the day, and blew through every safety precaution in a mad rush to stuff money into Solyndra’s coffers.
Furthermore, Obama’s policies make the closing of plants like the one in Janesville far more likely. He’s a strong supporter of the labor unions whose wage demands made GM’s business model unsustainable. He’s keeping American oil production down, and pushing the price of gasoline up. And just a couple of days ago, the Obama Administration announced plans todouble the average fuel efficiency standards by 2025. What did the Janesville plant manufacture? SUVs and light trucks.
The point Paul Ryan directly and clearly made is completely valid: Obama made a lot of promises he didn’t, or couldn’t, keep. Obama’s “plan” to keep Medicare and Social Security running for another hundred years is precisely as logical and valid as his commitment to keep the Janesville auto plant humming along until 2112. Ryan promised that the Romney administration will do better. It will be fair enough to judge the Romney-Ryan Administration during their 2016 re-election campaign by the same standards Paul Ryan applied to Obama 2008.
Read the whole thing, particularly the updates and use your deductive reasoning skills to understand who the real liars are.
Comments