Congressman Ryan to Obama, "Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir?"

This afternoon while everyone was expecting President Obama to explain his plan for getting the United States out of its serious deficit problem they got the first speech of his reelection campaign.  The president claimed his proposal would cut $4 trillion from the deficit in 12 years or less but instead of giving specifics of how he would do that, he provided a long list of what he would not accept.

Of course that was after he blamed George W.Bush for all the problems in the world and accused Republicans of wanting to eat babies, force all old people out into the street and of course planning to allow roads and bridges to crumble.

Even liberal columnist Kristen Powers saw what he was doing, she said:

Obama warned against demagoguing entitlement reform before he demagogued entitlement reform

ABC's Jake Tapper pointed out the disingenuous nature of Obama's speech:

President Obama at the GOP House retreat, January 2010:

“We're not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, ‘Well, you know, that's -- the other party's being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z.”

President Obama today:  

“One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates…This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.”

The best reaction however, was that of Congressman Ryan, who used a parental-tone as he took to the podium and called out the President for the fear tactics, lack of detail and overall nastiness of his rhetoric.  It reminded this observer of the famous line by attorney John Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy "Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir?"

(click here if you cannot see video below)




Here's the money quote:

Exploiting people’s emotions of fear, envy, and anxiety is not hope. It’s not change. It’s partisanship. We don’t need partisanship. We don’t need demagoguery. We need solutions. And we don’t need to keep punting to other people to make tough decisions. If we don’t make tough decisions today, our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

 Ryan is correct, our President has a little growing up to do.