Obama’s campaign released a new ad called “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare as we know it,” which explains how the Republican ticket intends to transform Medicare into a voucher system and how Paul Ryan, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, will affect Romney’s success in key battleground states like Florida.

The Democrat’s strategy has focused on inspiring fear among Medicare beneficiaries. It has tried to convince them that if the Republican ticket gets into the White House they would end Medicare in its current form. They have also tried to make Paul Ryan look radical as an architect of a budget plan that would only affect the most vulnerable Americans.

The new Obama ad even had world-famous economist Paul Krugman state that if Medicare is replaced by a voucher system, millions of elderly people would not have the money to afford insurance.

The ad also suggests that Ryan’s plan to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security could hurt Romney in a state with a large retired population like Florida. The video also asserts that Romney lied when he declared that President Obama was the one who was really destroying Medicare to fund Obamacare by introducing Romney saying that Obama “has taken $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund to pay for Obamacare.” The ad shows a news anchorman saying that benefits to seniors have really increased during Obama’s legislation as proof that Romney’s statement is false.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote a Townhall.com opinion article defending Romney and Ryan’s plan to save Medicare. Priebus wrote that, although Obama does not have a plan to save Medicare, he has taken billions of dollars from it to support Obamacare.

Priebus further explains that Medicare is predicted to go bankrupt in 2024 and the Democrats do not have a plan to save it, adding that they are using an old strategy to instill fear into the minds of senior citizens by lying about the Republican plans, hoping that the truth would not be known before the election.

But one thing that is clear about Ryan is that he has energized the Republican Party’s most conservative wing: 24 hours after his designation the Romney campaign had already received $3.5 million in online donations. And if Ryan could hurt Romney in some states, he would definitely help him in others. As a Tea Party member, Ryan would energize and mobilize Tea Party supporters in other battleground states.

Image Courtesy of   The White House’s photostream [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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About the author

Gerardo Jose Torres Montalvo
Student of Philosophy and Journalism in Universidad de Navarra, Spain. Interested in world politics, especially in Latin American issue and in political philosophy. I was born in the United States, but raised in El Salvador.