And Ryan’s Tampa speech, while pretty dishonest, was not especially so by Ryan’s standards. Here you can see why Ryan must view the sudden attack of the truth squad so bewilderingly. Ryan has been saying things like this, and worse, all along. The bit where he sadly shakes his head and blames President Obama for the failure of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that Ryan killed himself has been a staple of the Ryan shtick for two years. Reporters usually bat their eyes and coo sympathetically. Now it has become evidence of his duplicity .
Ryan seems to have fallen victim to circumstances he didn’t quite foresee. The Romney campaign has spent the last several weeks practically daring the national press corps to call out its lies.
Well beyond the usual exaggerations of a national campaign, Romney has built its entire message around two accusations — “you didn’t build that” and “just send them a check” — that are obviously false. A day before Ryan’s speech, a Romney adviser told reporters, “We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The media that had spent the last two and a half years nuzzling gently in Ryan’s lap had been prodded with sharp sticks and reacted in the predictable fashion, though probably not predictable to Ryan himself.
Paul Ryan: Fact Check Fury Could Threaten Political Brand
...less than four weeks since being introduced as Mitt Romney's running mate, Ryan has given rise to a furious fact-check revolution, with analysts saying his claims -- about everything from Health Care reform to his best marathon time -- could imperil what many had painted as his cardinal virtue -- honesty.
Most of the critical focus has been directed toward Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week.
It was there, before a naturally partisan and obviously delighted audience, that he claimed President Obama had "funneled" $716 billion from Medicare to pay for the new health care law, ignoring the fact that his own "Roadmap" had called for the same savings, accrued in the same manner.
