GOP winning national Medicare debate two weeks after Romney picked lightning rod Ryan

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

Republicans are winning the political debate on entitlement reform and Medicare, issues long dominated by Democrats, for the first time ever in the wake of Mitt Romney’s selection of running mate Paul Ryan.

A poll released last week shows seniors nationwide back the GOP proposals on Medicare, with tight battles in some key swing states.

Romney is beating President Barack Obama on Medicare among seniors by margins of 48 percent to 44 percent in Florida and 49 percent to 43 percent in Ohio, according to a New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac poll. In Wisconsin, Obama is barely ahead of Romney among seniors on Medicare, with a 49-to-46 percent lead.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post ran headlines like “Seniors <3 Paul Ryan” and “In Florida and Ohio, seniors back Romney over Obama on Medicare.”

“Grandma isn’t scared of Paul Ryan,” wrote The Post’s Aaron Blake, who noted that “fully one-third of seniors say they have a strongly favorable view” of Ryan.

And the president backed off Medicare and tried to divert attention instead to student loans and young voters last week, according to Bloomberg, in a sign that the campaign is retreating from what used to be politically safe territory.

The situation comes as a surprise to a party that, in previous election cycles, deliberately avoided entitlement talk on the campaign trail. Inside the beltway, GOP officials call the issue the “third rail of politics,” a political landmine that could end careers and bids for public office.

 

That’s why the left collectively jumped for joy when Romney, commonly known as a play-it-safe candidate, announced his vice presidential candidate pick on Aug. 11. Ryan, the young and energetic House Budget Committee chairman from the Midwest, is well-known in Washington for his complex budget plans, which call for numerous cuts and sweeping reforms of Medicare.

Some liberals started out almost immediately with harsh language that bordered on scaremongering. “Paul Ryan is a right-wing extremist who wants to end Medicare,” Adam Green of the far left Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement, for instance. “If Democrats win in a landslide, this was the game changer.”

Obama himself argued that the Ryan pick demonstrated a “stark” difference, especially on Medicare. The president tried to demonize what he called Ryan’s push to “voucheriz[e] our Medicare system,” calling it a weak attempt to address the debt and deficit when Republicans also support cutting taxes.

But in the two weeks since Romney picked Ryan, Republicans have shattered expectations and overcome that rhetoric, largely thanks to the presidential candidate’s aggressive campaign strategy.

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