James Downie: Five Ways Paul Ryan’s GM Attack Was Dishonest:
Five ways Paul Ryan’s GM attack was dishonest: Earlier, I pointed out that Paul Ryan’s convention address was “breathtakingly dishonest.” One example of his falsehoods was his story about the General Motors plant in Janesville…. Since this quote is getting a lot of attention, I just want to expand on what I wrote earlier and offer five reasons this was a blatant distortion.
The timeline: As I wrote earlier, Ryan doesn’t mention that GM announced on June 3, 2008, that it would close the plant…. The plant effectively shut down in December 2008, with a skeleton crew staying on until April 2009…. “[T]here was no way Obama could have saved that auto plant without also discovering time travel.”
The deceptive framing…. [Ryan] has been even more explicit about his meaning on the stump, saying in Ohio only two weeks ago, “I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise.” Obama, of course, made no such promise, but Ryan would prefer voters didn’t think that.
The inconsistent blame game: Note Ryan admits that “any fair measure of his record has to take [the economic crisis] into account.”… [I]f that’s the case, how is President Obama to blame for a plant closure in (if we’re being extremely generous) April 2009…. Romney’s own campaign has said that Romney’s first year in office shouldn’t count toward his job creation record. So much for taking a “fair measure” of the president’s record.
The philosophical self-contradiction: Paul Ryan has made his name in part as a small-government man…. But saving the plant would have required a ‘big government’ bailout….
The other Obama quote: Again, conservatives have argued that Ryan used the Janesville plant as a symbol of how the Obama recovery has failed. Indeed, the Romney campaign now insists that Ryan wasn’t blaming Obama for the plant closing. But if that’s so, then Ryan should have used a different Obama quote, from October 2008: "Reports that the GM plant I visited in Janesville may shut down sooner than expected are a painful reminder of the tough economic times facing working families across this country. This news is also a reminder that Washington needs to finally live up to its promise to help our automakers compete in our global economy. As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America." So yes, in February 2008, Obama had said that the plant could be able to stay open, but in the midst of that fall economic collapse, he changed his view to account for reality. That’s what he was promising the voters of Janesville when he entered office, not what Paul Ryan claims that he was promising…. [U]sing that quote… would be honest. But it also wouldn’t be Paul Ryan.
