By Dana Milbank, Published: May 25
If history, as Mark Twain said, does not repeat itself, this must be one of those weeks when it rhymes in unusually precise pentameter.
On Wednesday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), author of the House Republicans’ plan to end the Medicare guarantee, awoke to find that his plan was being blamed for the loss of a solidly Republican congressional seat in a New York special election on Tuesday. So he headed over to the cameras in the Cannon House Office Building Rotunda to vent about Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics.
“The president and his party have decided to shamelessly distort and demagogue Medicare,” he protested to his former House GOP colleague Joe Scarborough, now host of MSNBC’s morning show.
Moments later, he took his complaint to Fox News morning man Steve Doocy. “It’s a preview of the scare tactics, distortions, demagoguery, to try and scare seniors,” Ryan charged.
He’s right about that. Democrats and, particularly, liberal activists, are engaged in some shameless demagoguery (one group’s ad shows a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman and her wheelchair off a cliff). And Ryan is well qualified to call out shameless demagoguery and scare tactics: Over the past two years, he has practiced both.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryan-gets-a-taste-of-his-own-shameless-demagoguery/2011/05/25/AGeROUBH_story.html