LOS ANGELES TIMES: Paul Ryan mostly got raves for the “optics” of his speech Wednesday night before the Republican National Convention, winning the image battle on the biggest night of his young political life. But by the time the reviews came piling in after midnight, the Republican vice presidential nominee had taken a serious beating for straying repeatedly from the facts.
The GOP’s newly minted Boy Wonder, just 42, bent or ignored the record on issues ranging from Medicare, to President Obama’s debt-reduction commission, to the closing of a GM plant in his Wisconsin hometown, to the beneficiaries of federal stimulus spending — according to a couple of fact-check organizations and news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
The news organizations responded to specific claims in the speech, but it’s doubtless President Obama and the Democrats will make a case about broader inconsistencies — such as the Republican record of fulminating about budget deficits while voting for tax cuts for the wealthy and a massive Medicare drug expansion that helped balloon the amount America owes… (more)
