Krugman Slams Press Over Debate Dishonesty

Today on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, economist Paul Krugman had some strong words for the press, who praised Romney's "style" this past week after the Debate in Denver instead of fact-checking his lies on his shifting positions.

The show also featured Republican pundit Peggy Noonan, Mary Matalin and her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville, and Democratic spokesman Robert Gibbs. Some of their statements are below as well . . .

At one point Matalin accuses Paul Krugman of being a liar for saying that Paul Ryan has a "voucher" plan. *eyeroll*

Complete Transcript Here

KRUGMAN: I don't know whether to blame Lehrer or blame the president but it was kind of amazing because Romney was not only saying things that are not true, he was saying things that his own campaign had previously said weren't true. The one that got me was not the stuff about taxes but the thing about covering people with pre-existing conditions which his plan does not, which he has said that before and his campaign has walked it back in the past and there he was right again saying, well, my plan covers people with pre-existing conditions which is displaying a kind of contempt to the public...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you think it's the moderator's job to call him on that...

KRUGMAN: No, I'm not sure whose job it is, but it is -- there's a contempt for the whole process. There's a contempt for us people, because he's thinking the news media will not cover me on this, as long as they say it forcefully they'll say I won, which is more of the ways...

MATALIN: Oh, you're going to say the press is against Obama now?

KRUGMAN: The press just doesn't know how to handle flat out untruths.

~~~

KRUGMAN: When you say my covers pre-existing conditions when it doesn't and when your own campaign has admitted in the past that it doesn't, what do you say? That's amazing.

MATALIN: You have Mitt characterized -- and you have lied about every position and every particular of the Ryan plan on Medicare from the efficiency of Medicare administration to calling it a voucher plan, so you're hardly...

KRUGMAN: It is a voucher plan.

MATALIN: You are hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar. Here's what else...

~~~

NOONAN: I think one of the key things about the debate is it's changed -- we will look back on it as an historic moment in this election. It upended things. This is what it upended. Barack Obama was supposed to be the sort of moderate centrist fellow, who looked at Mitt Romney, this extreme, strange fellow. By the time that debate was over, Mitt Romney seemed a completely moderate, centrist figure, who showed up as Mitt Romney the governor, not as Mitt Romney the candidate.

KRUGMAN: Except that everything he used to claim his centrism wasn't true, so this is a question, does that start to take its toll over the next few months.

~~~

STEPHANOPOULOS: And finally, will we see a different game from President Obama in the next debate?

GIBBS: Well, again, I think now that Barack Obama has had the opportunity to meet both Mitt Romneys, I don't doubt that he'll make some adjustments. I know he's looking forward to the next debate.

~~~

PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yeah, I thought the president barely showed. I thought "The New Yorker" cover -- the now famous "New Yorker" cover in which they had a candidate Romney at a podium looking at the empty chair where Mr. Obama would have been, captured it all. I am very curious about what the heck happened. Was it a strategic mistake on the part of the Obama campaign to play it a certain way and it didn't work or were there other factors involved? To me it is a mystery and one of those delicious things that will probably be answered in the big books about 2012 but, yes, the president was bad, Romney was good.



STEPHANOPOULOS: You want to jump right in here.

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: This is classic Obama. He really, really wants to be the president of national unity. He's always wanted to be the reconciliation candidate and his instincts always in confrontations is to not go for the jugular but to go for the capillaries. He doesn't -- did the same thing in 2008. People forget just how weak his campaign was through August of 2008 when he just was refusing to make the obvious case against McCain and then he toughened up but also...

STEPHANOPOULOS: In the debate he toughed up in 2008.

KRUGMAN: Because he needs to be -- have his head against the wall.

So this was classic. This was him - this was the real Obama who does not like -- he really wants to be a president of the whole nation. And he somehow has a hard time wrapping his mind around the necessity to take a tougher line.

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I said on CNN I said I didn't want to come to this conclusion but sitting watching I have to come to it. He just didn't want to be there.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So it wasn't strategy?

CARVILLE: I don't think it was. We'll know the next debate. I mean he's obviously either got to be different or it's going to be pretty bad but just looked like to me he really didn't want to be there. His mind wasn't on it. He didn't want to engage. He just wanted to get through the 90 minutes. And I'm sure he's a very competitive guy. I hope -- knock on wood - we're going to see a different President Obama at Hofstra.

ABC's This Week: Two Georges and Three Pauls

On ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos - and his cohort George Will - juggled three "Pauls" ~ Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, and Paul Krugman. There's also a Cokie and a Cory, but they don't add much substance.

Video of Episode Here

Complete Transcript Here

Paul Ryan was almost impossible to pin down with specifics about what he and Romney would do if elected. Mainly he just repeated GOP talking points and lies about how various programs work.

Here's a good example: On Medicaid. Ryan dances around all the good that Medicaid does for children, seniors, and the disabled, and instead starts bashing Obamacare. He also ignores the basic fact that most governors know good and well that their constituents need Medicaid, and that states don't have the resources to make up the difference if those funds are cut. Ryan's version of "flexibility" for the states is code for "pay for it yourselves."

STEPHANOPOULOS: President Clinton also took aim at the savings you do propose in Medicaid -- $800 billion, the largest specific savings in your plan. That's about a 35 percent reduction over the next decade.

And the president argued that it's going to be devastating for seniors who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care, middle-class families challenged by disabilities, children with autism. How can you squeeze that much money of a program, $800 billion, without cutting benefits or restricting eligibility?

RYAN: Here's the secret on this one. Medicaid spending still goes up under what we're proposing. What we're saying is we want to repeal ObamaCare, because we think it's a terrible law. And so we're taking away the massive increases in ObamaCare that are attributable to Medicaid. About a third of the people that ObamaCare is supposed to serve, they're just pushing people on Medicaid.

Here's the problem, George. Medicaid is not working. More and more doctors are less likely to even take people with Medicaid. It's a system that needs reforming.

So we don't want to put more money and force more people on a program that's failing, that's not working. We want to reform Medicaid. And so what were saying is, don't expand this program as dramatically as ObamaCare does. Keep it like it is, increase its funding and send it to the states so the states can fix this problem. I think government closest to the people, especially in providing health care for the poor, works the best.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But The Urban Institute has estimated that between 14 million and 27 million people will -- fewer people will be covered under that plan. And won't the block grant, block-granting this program, sending it to the states, mean that low-income and disabled people will lose their guaranteed right to coverage?

RYAN: No, not at all, of course not. Look, governors are asking us all the time for more flexibility on Medicaid. There are a lot of different ideas out there on how best to cover the low-income populations of various states. And look, every state has different issues and different problems. So we want to be able to give the states the tools they need, make sure that they spend this money on their Medicaid population, but give them the ability to fix the problems in their unique state --

STEPHANOPOULOS: But doesn't --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- individuals will not have a federal guarantee under a block grant. That's correct, isn't it?

RYAN: Sure. No, with maintenance of that -- I won't get into the details, but with maintenance of effort requirements, which is what we've done in the past, they still have to serve this population. They just get more flexibility on how to serve this population, instead of all these rules and strings from Washington that make it really hard for them to make sure that they can meet the mandate and provide the best possible quality care to low-income populations.

Yep ~ that flexibility thing will solve everything. No details necessary - just vote him into office and he will "fix" the system. Oy Vey.

Then Rand Paul and Paul Krugman bickered over another talking point ~ whether government has "exploded" under Obama, which according to the GOP, it has. Rand Paul fervently believes it, anyway.

PAUL: ... understand is you are arguing that the government sector is struggling. Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than they were under Bush?

KRUGMAN: That's a fact.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: No, the size of both -- of government is enormous under President Obama.

KRUGMAN: If government employment had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Bush, we would have a million-and-a-half more people employed right now, directly.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: Are there less people employed or more people employed now by government?

Then they got back to commenting on Paul Ryan - with a classic Paul Krugman smackdown of doofus and Democratic concern-troll Cory Booker:

Booker: . . . This is Paul Ryan who used to be a man of substance, who put up plans, I may disagree with some of them, but with great levels of specificity. Now they have said they're going to cut $5 trillion in taxes, increase spending in the military, and somehow not dig us into a deeper deficit budget...

. . . KRUGMAN: I'm going to disagree, respectfully, he was never a man of substance. This is who he always was. That was always an illusion.

Later, Krugman had a few choice words for the Republican Convention:

KRUGMAN: It's not a matter of individual speeches or strategic positioning. The Republican Party is where it is because that's where the base is. And you watched that whole primary process, Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs. And they could not -- they could not reach out to the growing demographic--

Old Republican Geezer George Will thinks we should do away with political conventions entirely - I guess because he wanted to go bed early instead of watch them, plus he yearns for the day when Bill Clinton isn't making lengthy speeches (dream on, George). Paul Krugman points out the educational purpose of such a convention, bringing the whole thing back around to Paul Ryan, whose speech truly "defined" him at the RNC in Tampa.

WILL: We need a little data on who watches these conventions and what effect they have. Because, you know, conventions are a government program, and there is an enormous amount of tax dollars that goes into this. And like all government programs, they are immortal and they go on forever. Maybe we should terminate these.

KRUGMAN: I thought the two conventions were enormously informative. A lot of people who normally catch politics in snippets on the news, got to see extended laying out of positions on both sides. And a lot happened. Right? We saw -- we saw the implosion of Paul Ryan, you know, extraordinary dissent and reputation, because people got to see him speaking at length on national TV. We saw Bill Clinton laying out a case in more detail than most people would ever get to see. These were -- I'm not sure that conventions don't decide anything in terms of who gets nominated, but they turn out to be extremely effective educational programs.

Tim Pawlenty Admits Giving Romney "A Bunch" of Tax Returns

Mahahahahahahahaha!!!!! This made my day!!!

Found Via Scott Wooledge

Tim Pawlenty, ex-governor of Minnesota, who was also courted by the Romney campaign to be Veep before they chose Paul Ryan, had a deer-in-the-headlights moment on ABC's This Week when George Stephanopoulos asked how many tax returns Pawlenty provided to the Romney camp while being vetted for Vice President. After a long, long pause, he said:

Via ABC News

PAWLENTY: There were several years, I believe. Well, we don’t get into the details of the vetting process, but I gave them a bunch of tax returns. I don’t remember the exact number of years.

Ha! So we can assume that Paul Ryan also had to turn over tax returns, which begs the question why it's fair game for Veep Vetting but not for Presidential selection? When will Romney release his tax returns to the American people? This isn't going away.