A lot will be written today and in coming days about how the Republican Party could possibly lose a special election in a sure thing Republican district — losing in a way that cannot be accurately blamed on a former Democrat running as a Tea Party candidate but more accurately due a huge defection in Republican votes and votes from seniors which led to a Republican loss despite big bucks piped in from all over the country to defeat the Dems.
As most experts who don’t have partisan axes to grind will most assuredly predict (and if you go to Google News you’ll see a ton of stories doing exactly that already) the loss will be blamed on GOPers embracing the Ryan plan and the idea of gutting Medicare as it now exists. Republicans including in this district have tried to dance around what Ryan’s plan would entail using all kinds of talking points.
But in the the end voters seemed to reach a conclusion partially included in the lyrics of this old tune — which with some slight lyric changes could be the theme song for this special election…the message from voters to the GOP on this issue:
On his Twitter page, Larry Sabato, one of the most accurate non-ideology-motivated political analysts in America, offers these predictions about how the GOP might now try to extricate itself from this political tar pit that is pulling it down:
LarrySabato Larry Sabato
Another way out of Ryan corner is to construct debt limit deal that preserves Medicare. Rs can say Ryan was just “negotiating ploy”.
2 hours ago»
Larry Sabato
LarrySabato Larry Sabato
My guess: House Rs will devise pro-Medicare vote for members to negate effect of backing Ryan plan. Better than whistling past graveyard
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.