NorthIowaToday.com

Founded in 2010

News & Entertainment for Mason City, Clear Lake & the Entire North Iowa Region

Biden takes aim at Romney-Ryan team

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau –

DURHAM, N.C. — It’s no longer two against one, with Romney and Ryan now matched against Obama and Biden. But in his initial salvo against his Republican counterpart, Vice President Joe Biden argued that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were indistinguishable when it comes to policies he said would hurt the middle class.

Biden shared with an audience of a few hundred here that he called to congratulate Rep. Ryan after his selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate Saturday, and they agreed that the choice before voters now would be a stark one. And he praised the Wisconsin Republican in a way that doubled as an attack on the GOP’s presidential hopeful.

“Congressman Ryan has given definition to the vague commitments that Romney’s been making,” Biden said. “There is no distinction between what the Republican Congress has been proposing and what Governor Romney wants to do.”

That effort to link Romney with an unpopular House Republican majority had been a staple of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign as it ramped up against the former Massachusetts governor this spring. His choice of Ryan, however, has revived that focus, as Biden made clear here.

First, the vice president took issue with the notion that Ryan’s budget blueprint, one that he said Romney had embraced, was “gutsy.”

“What’s gutsy about gutting Medicare, Medicaid and education?” Biden asked. It’s not only not a bold, new plan, he added: “It’s not fair” to the middle class, and a repeat of failed policies from the Bush administration.

He quoted Ryan as saying Saturday that the GOP ticket would “restore the dreams and greatness of this country.”

“What he didn’t say that the very plans he voted for, what Romney has supported, put America’s greatness at jeopardy. How do they think we got in this mess in the first place?” Biden added.

“As my little granddaughter would say, was it Casper the Ghost who came along and did this? Who did it?”

Biden also used Ryan to hold Romney accountable for what he termed as “obstructionism” on the part of House Republicans, voting against Obama initiatives he said would have spurred further job growth.

The choice of Ryan seemed to inject more fire into an already feisty campaigner in Biden. And while the Wisconsin congressman afforded him new material, there were signs that the Democrats would keep their sites on Romney, as Biden repeated previous attacks on Romney’s wealth and business record.

Biden was introduced by the head of a nearby T-shirt design company, who said the president’s policies have put life back in the state’s sagging manufacturing sector. And, in a clear reference to Romney, he said that despite economic distress his company “never outsourced our jobs. Our employees are our most valuable assets.”

For his part, Biden asked how Romney could call Obama out of touch when he had money in a “Swiss bank account.”

The Romney campaign shot back that Biden “doubled down on the same failed policies that have resulted in skyrocketing debt, higher taxes and record job losses.”

“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand that our country is facing serious challenges that have been made worse by the Obama administration’s big government agenda,” Ryan Williams said.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Even more news:

Watercooler
Copyright 2024 – Internet Marketing Pros. of Iowa, Inc.
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x