Paul Ryan, GOP Now Say They Love Medicare

Remember, the Tea Partiers aren't too bright

If Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and the GOP get their extremist war plans enacted to destroy Medicare, the popular social insurance program will end, as Gingrich promised would happen in 1995:

Now, we don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that that's politically smart, and we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it -- voluntarily. (NYT)

Destroying Medicare would be political suicide for the Republican Party.

So, the new GOP line is to lie.

And the new GOP line on Medicare is in effect: Destroy Medicare, while pretending to save Medicare.

Writes Eugene Robinson:

[I]t was Democrats who conceived of Medicare, passed it into law and kept it viable all these years. It was Republicans who denounced the program as 'socialized medicine' — and who now want to replace Medicare’s guarantee with a system of vouchers.
Republicans may tell themselves that the GOP is the party of Medicare. But I doubt seniors will be convinced.

I doubt it too.

The 2012 Democratic Party convention will feature the credible message of protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from the GOP-Tea Party.

And the GOP-Tea Party tries to convince America they just want to save these popular social insurance programs by their new-found love for them. Newt Gingrich says so, Mitt Romney says so and so does Paul Ryan, the whole bunch of GOP-Tea Partiers:

"The first step is to move the two programs away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model."

As Paul Krugman notes: "That means that instead of Medicare as we know it, which pays your medical bills, you’d get a lump sum which you can apply to private insurance — they’ll yell when we call it a voucher, but that’s what it is."

Let's hope the GOP keeps talking.