Mitt Romney has picked his vice-presidential running mate - Paul Ryan. That means Romney has also chosen to support Ryan's fiscal policies. Suddenly, the race has become ideological. And what is that ideology?
Basically, Ryan's policy with regards to the poor and middle class is to just let them get old and die. Rich people can always afford health care. Ryan's idea is to provide the elderly poor with government vouchers in place of Medicare. They can then use those vouchers to purchase insurance in the open market. But Ryan also wants to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act. That means the insurance companies will no longer have to accept patients with pre-existing conditions. Many elderly people have pre-existing conditions. In addition, the insurance companies are in business to make a profit. They won't be able to make much profit from the elderly because they get sick more often. Therefore, their insurance premiums, assuming they can even find a company to insure them, will be unaffordable. It will cost way more than their vouchers will be worth.
But that's ok with Romney and Ryan. Maybe the poor should have worked harder and gotten rich, like them. Conservatives don't seem to realize that it takes more than hard work and effort to get rich. If all it took was hard work there would be a whole lot more rich people in this country.
In addition to their fiscal conservatism the dysfunctional duo are also extreme social conservatives. Romney is a practicing Mormon, which means he not only believes all the mythology of standard Christianity, he adds another layer of mysticism on top of that. If Romney and Ryan get in office, there will no longer be a war on women or a war on science. Those battles will have been won. Conservative moral principles will be the law of the land. Women will no longer have reproductive choice. Gays can forget about getting married. There will be zero progress on global warming and who knows what kind of pseudoscience will be permitted in high school science classes.
It's a scary prospect and it's sad to know that so many middle class voters will actually cast their votes for this pair. That will, of course, be a vote cast against their own future prosperity and personal choices.
1 comment:
It really boggles my mind that people will vote against their best interests. As far as I can tell, part of it is that many people overestimate their income level. I.e., people on the low end of income tend to think of themselves as "middle class." It's a strange phenomenon.
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