Did Paul Ryan Cripple Grand Bargain To Limit Obamas Re-Election Chances? By Sam Stein | HuffPost | 08/13/2012 9:59 pm Excerpts: WASHINGTON In its profile of newly minted, presumptive vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan Monday morning, The New York Times reported a new and potentially telling anecdote from the height of last summer's debate over raising the debate ceiling. Ryan, the paper said, urged his own party's leadership to scuttle a grand bargain with President Barack Obama, in part out of concern that a deal may result in a second term for Obama. Mr. Ryans enormous influence was apparent last summer when Representative Eric Cantor, the second most powerful House Republican, told Mr. Obama during negotiations over an attempted bipartisan grand bargain that Mr. Ryan disliked its policy and was concerned that a deal would pave the way for Mr. Obamas easy re-election, according to a Democrat and a Republican who were briefed on the conversation. The Times went on to note that "an official in Mr. Cantors office disputed the characterization, and a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, who was also there, said he 'has no recollection of such a discussion.'" So, who's right? The answer, according to two Republican sources who witnessed the debt ceiling negotiations, is somewhere in the middle. Ryan, they acknowledged, did raise concerns about the political fallout of Obama and Boehner reaching a bargain that would see $800 billion to $1 trillion in revenues exchanged for spending cuts and changes to Social Security and Medicare. But that was the least pressing of Ryan's three main concerns. "Boehner was negotiating with Obama. Ryan had gone to Cantor and to Boehner saying he doesn't support the policy, he doesn't think it could be sold to the conference, and, three, he thought it would guarantee the president's reelection," said a GOP aide who spoke anonymously in order to discuss private deliberations. "There were certain people ... who thought the pursuit of the grand bargain was a useless pursuit because it could never pass anyway," the aide added. "Ryan was one of them. Ryan is opposed to tax increases. He's a policy guy. His primary concern was with the deal being constructed. And he went to Cantor and Boehner personally a few days [after the grand bargain was reported] and made the case that it was a bad decision all around. His final point was that the politics were bad too." A second senior Republican congressional aide with knowledge of the debt ceiling negotiations made a similar point, while downplaying the overall significance of Ryan's political argument. In a separate exchange with the Huffington Post, Cantor's office firmly denied that he opposed the debt ceiling deal because of the political implications it would have for the president. As for Ryan's office, a spokesman for the Wisconsin congressman referred questions to the Romney campaign. The Romney campaign did not return a request for comment. But it still doesn't help the current sale of Ryan as someone willing to shelve ideological purity for common good. That image is part of what the Romney campaign has tried to promote during the early days of the Ryan vice president announcement. Ryan was mostly sidelined during the debt ceiling debates. In his public statements, he opposed the "grand bargain" on grounds that there were not enough spending cuts in exchange for revenue increases and that the reforms to entitlements wouldn't actually affect their long-term solvency. When the deal fell apart and Boehner and the president negotiated a separate bill to cut trillions in spending, both immediately and through sequestration, Ryan offered his support. The exact nature of the role Ryan played behind the scenes will be fleshed out in the next month or so. One of the GOP sources quoted in this article noted that the Washington Post's Bob Woodward is writing a book on the debt ceiling negotiations and relayed that Ryan "sat down with him." The book is set to be released this fall, before the election. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/paul-ryan-debt-ceiling-bill-grand-bargain_n_1773971.html ....... I think there is little doubt about the republican conspiracy to scuttle any agreement concerning thias grand bargain when all the republicans did from January 2009 was obstruct President Obamas every move toward bringing us out of this Bush Recession..in fact it was their avowed statement that President Obama was to be a one-term president. From 2009 thru today, that is their malignant purpose for reporting for work each day in Congress. This is so sad and treasonous that elected officials could work so vociferously against their own country because our country had its first black president. President Obama never even had a chance to show the country what he could do in normal times, but he kept us from the Bush Abyss by careful strategies, gave us a huge universal healthcare plan, provided a small stimulus that even the republicans had to admit worked, and has slowly kept adding jobs despite the obstruction and clamor of the republican party for 3 ½ years out of his first four years as president. I can believe that the republicans did conspire to keep the grand bargain from being accepted while the kept the country in an uproar with their preening, posturing, smears, lies, and doing absolutely nothing to pass the bills that have been kept waiting on their tables to be passed; that they certainly did try to thwart every reasonable negotiation sought by President Obama that would not hurt the people of America. The republicans simply do not have the honor required to call themselves Congressmen any longer; they do not belong in Congress, and need to be forced out so that Congress can once again take to their duties of running the country. The republicans from GW Bush forward have put a horrible stench on Washington, making us the most dangerous laughingstock of the world.
Do you rate all your Huffington Post threads 5 stars? Let me correct it for you and vote it down a few stars.... there that is better. Now, you do realize Barack Obama had owned the Congress and Senate his first two years and FAILED to pass ANY Budget? You and the Huffington Post know that.... RIGHT? Pathetic thread fail.
Our country cannot afford to have Obama re-elected. That would be fiscal insanity. It may have only been a tertiary reason, but for the good of the country it should be considered. From a practical perspective, the concept that this would somehow guarantee Obama's re-election makes zero sense so I don't believe anyone would make this argument.
...... 1) Only the good ones...you know: ones that get the immediate panic replies..LOL 2) I bet you wish you could take away the whole article, eh? LOL 3) You wish..LMAO
..... 1) To have a Romney/Ryan presidency would be much worse than 'fiscal insanity' GW Bush was fiscal insanity... 2) Obama is ahead, will stay ahead because he is believable, and will be elected in a tsunami vote...Romney and Ryan are from Pluto; they have no plan unless it is to corporate-raid the White Hoiuse refrigerator. They are hopelessly lacking in the requirements of both a president and vice president...their nomination is a flurry of very bad mistakes on the part of the GOP.
Er, yeah, that's the ticket. Yeah, Ryan crippled the economy single-handedly just to mess with Obama. Yeah. Little tribute to lovitz seemed appropriate after that OP.
The neo-tea party entered into a conspiracy to commit high-treason and against Obama on the night of Obamas' inauguration over dinner a block away ... and have conducted themselves as domestic terrorists right up until the Grand Bargain Debt Crisis ... and where Ryan introduced his Path to Prosperity as a last ransom in taking America hostage ... This is what Romney meant by *bold choice* in choosing Ryan as a *bold visionary* ... The rest of the world calls it *pull'n a McPalin*
The fiscal stupidity of Obama should be obvious to all but the true-believers. Assuming your supposition is true, does it have anything at all to do with the conspiracy that you presented in this thread - "he thought it would guarantee the president's reelection"? Does anyone seriously believe that raising the debt ceiling is going to "guarantee" the President's re-election?
The good news is that if the Repubs win they will tick off the dummies who voted for them so much that there will be riots from one end of the country to the other. And that should kill off the Repubs forever. The UN will have to impose a no-fly zone and send in some peacekeepers.
