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Ryan a Strong VP Choice Say Pa. Republicans

Red Keystone Snap Poll shows strong support for Ryan among Pennsylvania Republicans.

A snap Red Keystone survey of GOP activists in Pennsylvania by Patch shows strong support for U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s

Ryan as vice presidential nominee will help galvanize Republican voters in the Keystone State, according to more than two thirds of respondents.

More than half also say Ryan will help the GOP ticket win undecided voters.

Respondents aren’t concerned that Democrats can win by running against Ryan's existing budget plans and particularly his proposal for Medicare.

Several respondents noted that Ryan will help the GOP win young voters.  But one Republican commented, “I don't believe that a VP pick ultimately changes elections. Perhaps the last time it did was in 1960.”

Here are other comments on Ryan from Pennsylvania Republicans who replied to an automated survey sent by Patch on Saturday:

  • He is a man with a substantive fiscal plan, the best hope for a truly honest discussion of our fiscal problems. Unlike almost all other politicians, he calls a spade a spade.
  • His 14 years in Congress gives insight, strength and balance to Romney's experience as a governor.
  • It takes the focus of the race to the economy, which will help Romney.
  • It sends a clear message that a President Romney will be serious about tackling the deficit.
  • This may galvanize the ‘Audit the Fed’ crowd, but unless they come forward with real fiscal arguments that reasonable voters can accept, and convince people the deficit must be solved, they will not be able to get much traction in Pennsylvania.
  • Rep. Ryan brings a clear vision to a campaign that, so far, had been severely lacking in detail.
  • Returns discussion to fiscal policy, not tax returns.
  • He is a fiscal conservative. He has the fullest understanding of any possible candidate of the breadth and scope of the fiscal disaster and the resulting crash in our economy and the crushing of our individual liberty and freedom.

Our surveys are not a scientific random sample of any larger population but rather an effort to listen to a swath of influential local political activists, party leaders and elected officials in Pennsylvania.

All of these individuals have agreed to participate in the surveys, although not all responded to Saturday's questions about U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan.

Patch will be conducting Red Keystone and Blue Keystone surveys throughout 2012 in hopes of determining the true sentiment of conservatives and liberals on the ground in Pennsylvania.

If you are an activist, party leader or elected official and would like to take part in occasional surveys that last just a few minutes, please email susan.koomar@patch.com

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Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 02:16 am
Without as much of a social net, they won't breed so quickly. We make it too easy to be a bum.
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 05:09 am
Crestor, I see absolutely nothing to support that assertion - if anything, greater poverty and lack of access to health education seems to increase the birth rate. And what solution do you propose to eliminate dependence on the 'safety net'? Letting babies born into poor American homes go hungry rather than chip in with your taxes? You'd cut 40 million people off from food stamps so they can go earn more money...where? Are you going to cut Social Services and Medicare? We can support all our country's elderly, but not all it's newborns? What is the end result of your plan for the poor and their children - I'd love to hear it.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 02:48 pm
The vast majority of the kids, and all the mothers, are fat. Too much in food stamps. Life is too easy... they can just lay around, eating and reproducing. Yes, make it tough. Maybe if the kids don't have it so easy, the sows will slow down the breeding. Tough love? Ya. I'm tired of having to pay more for their irresponsible behavior. Or, take it to the logical conclusion... if you want the government to support you and your suckers, then you have to take birth control. After two illegitimate kids, tubes tied. There is no reason for society to support this type of absurdly irresponsible behavior. Elective birth control and education? HA! Doesn't matter... more suckers means more money. They have the suckers to get MORE CASH from the government. Wake up, will ya?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 04:47 pm
Well, if your argument is that for the poor "Life is too easy..." then perhaps that level of disconnect from reality makes this subject harder to understand. They are already the poorest people in the country - how much harder do you want their lives to be? Why? And if you truly want the government forcing medical procedures on poor women to prevent pregnancy, then I think you might be confusing 'tough love' with old-fashioned 'fascist hatred.' And how does that even solve anything? What jobs are the unexperienced and uneducated going to work, regardless of their number of children? How will cutting off food and social services not just leave the poor more hungry and desperate, placing a greater emphasis on the viability of crime? If you're looking to root out absurdly socially irresponsible behavior, perhaps you should start with the 'starve all the poor people' plan.
Phillyjazz August 21, 2012 at 05:13 pm
Clearly the Randian lack of compassion in starving and involuntarily sterilizing the poor is at the extreme end of what humans are capable of suggesting. Unfortunately, this kind of extremism is becoming more and more acceptable as the Republicans bend ever more to the wishes of the tea party. The fact that our Education System us based on Property Taxes and ensures that the vicious cycle of poor education and lack of home ownership is perpetuated has no bearing on this argument. That people are malnourished and obese because the only affordable foods in impoverished neighborhoods are fat and carb laden junk from bodegas is of no consequence, let alone the fact that knowledge of nutrition comes only from a decent education. The fact that event those who would LOVE to work a full-time job would lose their health care for taking a job at Burger King (which by the way has been filled by someone with a College degree and a $200,000 student load debt to pay off. Yes, there is a cultural problem with HIV-positive unwed mothers who continue to have a half dozen babies with various fathers, none of whom have any intention of supporting these children. Starving them is not the answer.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 05:22 pm
The poorest people in the country are all fat, live in nice apartments (compared to the poor in the rest of the world), have air conditioning, heat, cable TV, a govt. issued cell phone and TIVO. They live like kings compared to the poor in the rest of the world. As a result, they have no reason to get off their butts and work. The brats are all paid for with more money, more food stamps, WIC program, etc. Their kids are raised by a single mother too busy laying on her back to get pregnant again to take any notice of the brats. The brats learn that the way you live is to get pregnant at 14, then keep popping out suckers till you have 7 or so. Then you can live comfortably like mamma does. The plan where we fix this problem by giving them more and more and more free stuff IS NOT WORKING. JUST LOOK. As to what job can one of these folks get? A minimum wage job. McDonalds. But why should they? They get so much more just given ot them. They would have to find a $40,000 year job to live as well. So why work? Just sit around the apartment all day and service the men who pass through, then throw some Captain Crunch at the kids before they head out to spend all night on the streets making drug deals with their government supplied cell phones.
Ya... it's time that if you don't want to work, your life sucks. Right now, it doesn't suck for these people, and the rest of us are just supposed to throw more cash at them while they reproduce like rabbits.
Phillyjazz August 21, 2012 at 05:35 pm
Crestor: Here's an idea ... Why don't you ADOPT a half dozen of these kids, and raise them to be responsible citizens like you ?? The instead of just being a whining complainer, you'd be doing something really positive to benefit society ??
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 06:14 pm
When you say "The poorest people in the country are all fat, live in nice apartments..., have air conditioning, heat, cable TV, a govt. issued cell phone and TIVO." You know that's completely and obviously false, right? A cursory drive through huge swaths of Philadelphia would make that plainly evident. Even in situations where some of that might be applicable, you complain that America's poor live better than the poor of the rest of the world - how is that not a good thing? Regardless, your plan is that they work at McDonalds to barely make enough money so that they can afford to eat at McDonalds? And then what - they are still unemployable anywhere else, still uneducated, still unhealthy, and, most importantly, still poor.
Does your vision of America have a perpetual underclass that exists only to barely feed and house itself just so that you have an extra thousand dollars at the end of the year? What kind of arrogant, entitled human being even contains the levels of hateful bile to conjure up something like "sit around the apartment all day and service the men who pass through, then throw some Captain Crunch at the kids before they head out to spend all night on the streets making drug deals"? The future of humanity has no place for that sort of ignorant, divisive enmity.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 06:51 pm
Tell me your future? More of the same, and hope it works out differently? Insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. They could still be given some aid if they work at McDonalds. BUT THEY MUST WORK !!! WORKERS SHOULD NOT PAY FOR THEIR IRRESPONSIbILITY !!! Why in Gods name do we have this class of people who get to just sit on their ass? WHY? Give them better schools? THEY make the schools suck. No amount of money will fix that. LAZY STUPID DRUG ADDICTED UNEMPLOYED SINGLE PARENTS is what causes this system to continue to perpetuate and grow. MORE CASH GIVE AWAYS DON'T FIX IT. NEVER DO.
Drive through Philly? Do it often. I see where they live. I see air conditioners. I see sat. dishes. I see them all running around with cell phones. What do you see?
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 06:57 pm
Oh ya... again... by your last comment, you want more of my money. Trust me, enough of it is taken already. And how is money the answer? We spend trillions already, how will more money fix this? Tell me specifically what you want to spend my extra $1000 on.
What I say is the truth, and not being able to look at the truth means you can't fix the problem. You keep looking at the problem and say "what haven't we done for these people yet, that they continue to struggle". I look at is and say "What have we done to these people that has made their blight worse NOW than when we started 40 years ago to address this problem.". Your path means we ignore the real issues, and throw more money at it, making it an even bigger issue.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 06:59 pm
And where do you get "entitled". I put myself through school, and work every day for what I have. No entitlement here. Just hard work. YOUR poor people are the entitled ones... entitled to my money and everyone elses.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 07:05 pm
Feeding them does not appear to be the answer either. What's your solution? And the schools suck because the students and parents make them suck, not because we don't spend billions on them.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 07:05 pm
Feeding them does not appear to be the answer either. What's your solution? And the schools suck because the students and parents make them suck, not because we don't spend billions on them.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 07:07 pm
I'm not whining. I'm telling the truth. What are you doing to fix things? Playing your sax?
Ego_Death August 21, 2012 at 07:50 pm
@ Lorbee... do you really believe what you type or are you just antagonizing people. Your comments are the epitome of ignorance and a fine example of the typical right wing stereotypical prejudice of pure BS and why most people with a bit of intelligence cannot stand what the GOP has become. Keep at it and you will repulse even your own party.
Ego_Death August 21, 2012 at 07:59 pm
@ Tom and Lorbee... What do you think would have happened if we continued on policies that bush started that destroyed our economy. At least things have stopped going downhill and the nation is at a recovery period instead of a downward spiral. There are plenty of positives on Obama's record:
1. Bail out of the auto industry successful 2. Stocks are at a 3.5 year high at the moment 3. Very strong national defense record... IE Ossama Bin Laden 4. Economy not losing jobs anymore by 100,000s a month 5. More US oil production than any other time in US history (drill baby drill) 6. Allowed concealed weapons in national parks (gun control... pro NRA) 7. Affordable Care Act (bottom line more people will have healthcare than ever before. Look at most experts opinion on what will happen to costs if its repealed.) This act will eventually lower healthcare costs for the middle class. What he hasn't done- 1. Held Wall Street accountable for the economic colapse... IE no one really in jail 2. Closed Gitmo 3. Stand up to the special interest The only group dividing the country is the GOP and their vow to make the current president fail at any cost. In my opinion that is treasonous. This president has done a good job despite every attempt by the GOP to stop him. Can you actually articulate what policies you do not like and how you would change them?
Ego_Death August 21, 2012 at 08:04 pm
@ Adrian- The Koch brother are pure libertarians and not republicans. They are very self centered interest but do support a lot of science and research. So many things about them I cannot stand but there are a few very good things that they do. Guess who is one of the main funders of NOVA?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 08:25 pm
Where do I get 'entitled'? Because everything in your life is made possible by generations of Americans working together to make the freedom of life in this country accessible to as many people as possible. The college you put yourself through depends on no-interest government loans to students to keep its doors open, along with teachers willing to work for less than they could be making to teach you the skills to make more. The money you make at work comes, in some fashion, from a huge network of people, both rich and poor, exchanging currency regardless of whether they earned it at work or received it from the government. Unless you are panhandling in the river for gold ore, your money comes from everybody else. It is entitled to act as though your labor makes it exclusively 'yours' instead of partially 'ours.' Food stamps go back to growers, minimum wage workers contribute to the roads you drive on, unemployed people with satellite dishes keep television funded through advertising, government subsidies to service providers for cell phones defray the cost of your phone plan. It would be great if there was meaningful, readily available work for everybody, but creating a social services vacuum in the blind hope that it will blossom into a self-sufficient unskilled labor environment instead of deeper levels of poverty, hunger and crime is delusional. The fact is, in the US in 2011, McDonald's only hired 62,000 of the over 1 million applicants they had.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 09:02 pm
Oh ya... I didn't build it..... ok..... Well, I could have dropped out of college at 15, gotten 7 girls pregnant, sat on my ass all day, collected my food stamps, and I'd be in the same boat as the folks we are talking about.
I did not go to a pubic school. I did not take government loans. Sorry. Wrong on those counts. Look... your just a Marxist of the highest order... my money is not mine, it's partially yours. OK. Whatever. Still waiting for you plan to correct the poverty and lazy breeder situation. What is it. Take more of my money... oppsss, I mean your money..... no wait... I don't mean your money, I mean my money that is partially your money..... oh damn... this Marxism is so hard to figure out. How about if I just work hard and do everything that I am able to do, but I only ask back what I really need... does that sound good, Karl ?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 09:06 pm
My future? Unsurprisingly, I would raise taxes until we had enough funding to create the greatest free educational system known to man - it requires a well educated populace to collaborate on building the America of the future - one that isn't dependent on foreign resources and manufacturing. An emphasis on renewable energy and domestic manufacturing, on locally owned business ecosystems, and heavy trade penalties for foreign goods made by workers paid less than their American equivalents.
America won't solve poverty until we have an abundance of living wage jobs available for everybody, and we won't have those jobs until we reduce dependency on foreign labor. The middle and upper classes can do that by paying way more for domestically produced goods and through increased taxes to support the inception of local business (which includes giving the unemployed enough money to support those businesses). So, yeah, more money will fix this, but not without some personal responsibility on the part of wage-earning Americans to keep their money in the US (or, at least, markets that US living wages are competitive in). What haven't we done for poor people? Kept jobs in America and their money in their own communities.
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 09:06 pm
And more correctly... I did not drive on the road of the McDonalds worker. I paid FAR MORE in taxes than the McDonalds worker. I got far less use of the road, for my money, than the bums who are out of work who drive on it, and the McDonalds workers who drive on it. MY MONEY pays part of their share for the roads. I paid far more than the use I got. NICE TRY.... How about we all pay the exact same in taxes to build the roads... huh?
Crestor Januvia August 21, 2012 at 09:10 pm
Reduce the handouts to the poor and I'll accept the slight increase in prices because they are not around to spend my money on their stuff. I'll be way better off. What FREAKIN' warped logic. Maybe I should give all my money away in taxes, give it to the poor, then everything will be free, because the poor are spending so much of my money on stuff.
Where do people like you come from?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 09:20 pm
Oh Crestor, you might not have taken government loans, but others did - private schools depend on federal loans, too, you know. If you can't see the connectivity of fiscal networks that make Capitalism work, that's your own failing to understand the nature of money and fiat currency - writing that off as Marxism is simply ignorant. It's Keynesian, if anything. And it's just 'our money' - not that hard of a concept - where does the money you earn come from if not from other people spending it?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 09:38 pm
What do you mean by "I did not drive on the road of the McDonalds worker" - of course you did; you drive on the road of the American citizen. Even if you paid more into taxes, that doesn't make it any less our - the entire premise of this country is based on taxes being spent for the public good by representatives. We all pay in, we all get equal services available whether we personally require them or not, and whether we even individually support them or not. Very low income families pay in by redistributing welfare to their community, low income families have taxes withheld before repayment for a year to keep government resources liquid - both of which are vital to the functioning of our economy. I'm all for everyone paying the exact same in taxes if everybody makes the exact same in wages, but that's probably not what you're proposing, right?
Morgan King August 21, 2012 at 09:56 pm
Well, of course - as the rate of available jobs per capita increases, those social welfare costs diminish. And it's not about YOU being better off, it's about America, the country you and I are both a part of, being better off. How is that not our mutual goal? Where do people like me come from? I'm your neighbor - there are hundreds of millions of us.
Crestor Januvia August 22, 2012 at 05:54 pm
You just don't want to accept that the country is collapsing. A country can support, maybe, 10% of it's citizens being non-productive. We probably are at about 30% now. And when the non-productive reproduce at a higher rate than the productive, you gradually get a higher and higher percentage of non-productive people. Right now, we are making it far too easy to be non-productive. It is a lifestyle that is passed on from generation to generation. If you can't see this is an unsupportable model, then you are just naive to a fault.
What's your solution... more tax dollars, right? More spending? Show me any evidence the money that has been spent so far has provided even an INCREMENTAL improvement in the dismal statistics of the poor. If it is working, the poor should be FAR better off then they were in the 60's.... they are WORSE off. The only model that works is one where you HAVE TO TAKE personal responsibility for yourself and your family. Once government steps in and takes, or tries to take, that responsibility, you get just what we have.... massive numbers of irresponsible people, living off the government. You just don't have the ability to look at things with an analytical mind. To you, it's always about taking more of somebodies money who produces, and GIVING it to somebody who does not, to MAKE THINGS FAIR, and improve their lives. You've actually accomplished the exact opposite over the last 40 years. Congrats.
Morgan King August 22, 2012 at 09:46 pm
Crestor, I already gave you my solution, and I think we can probably do it with the same taxation rate, but at the expense of other government services. We could, for example, only spend 9 times as much on Defense as for Education, instead of 10 times as much? Increase tariffs on goods sold in the US but manufactured elsewhere - maybe a 5% increase annually for the next 10 years? Creating jobs and educating the populace to perform those jobs well is how you end poverty. You can have all the 'personal responsibility' in the world but if there's no job for you, you are still going to be unemployed - it doesn't take an analytical genius to see that. If anything, the illegal drug trade that is so prevalent in poor communities is the result of applying personal responsibility in an employment vacuum.
Also, its not 'giving' or 'taking' money at all - it's all our money already, and it runs through the economy like blood in your circular system. We don't have a problem until it all clots somewhere or is thinned out as it is pumped into other systems - as long it's flowing freely within the body, the economy will be healthy. The government guarantees your money, your employer gives it to you, and you redistribute it into the economy - each dollar you spend into the system is no more or less valuable to the economy than each dollar spent into the system by the poorest person, regardless of its origin.
George August 22, 2012 at 11:54 pm
I agree with you, Morgan. The money should flow like blood in order to maintain a healthy economy. It sure doesn't do any good sitting around. We can't eat it.
We must make education and support (as in freely available health care and good food) for children a priority if we are going to break the cycle of poverty. If we can rearrange social services to focus on children of lower means and integrate their mothers better into the social fabric of society so these kids grow up healthy, wanted and cared for, we would be in a much better place within a generation or two. It is not right that for many in our society, it is easier to go to prison than to attend college. The last figure I saw was that just over 50% of people pay nothing in Federal income taxes, especially after deductions are figured in for housing and children. It is ridiculous that anyone in that 50% would complain about high taxation rates of income. They are already paying nothing in Federal income taxes.
heyho August 23, 2012 at 07:43 pm
Hawaii is not a foreign country. His mother was a white woman from Kansas. Deal with it.
frank August 29, 2012 at 08:02 pm
tv radio . and people that are dum brain wash others in to believing that mitt romney is what we need butt don't be foolt buy this man this man paid no taxes for ten years and he will continue to paid no taxes and he will buy cars boats land with are money we all paid taxes butt. he don't if you think that obama did a bad job. just wait into mitt romney becom president you don't know hell yet
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An interested bystander May 6, 2013 at 05:29 pm
Just pointing out facts. You are also forgetting that money withdrawn from an IRA or 401k (exceptRead More Roth IRAs) are taxed at withdrawal. I prefer my government not punish good financial actions. Sorry it's a quirk of mine, I think we should reward those who make good decisions, not punish them.
Tony Simek May 6, 2013 at 06:35 pm
I agree with you Interested Bystander. Problem is that if you punish the ones making the badRead More decisions, the Federal government will be punished all the time. In the current climate, poor decision making gets rewarded by voters. The middle class doesn't have a chance.
Bill May 9, 2013 at 05:11 am
Naziti and Caroline Johnson so sorry to take so long to get back to you from your comments onRead More Sunday, May 5th, I didn't think I would have to respond. I re-posted Ken's comment because the REAL issue is "AARP selling out it's faithful supporters for BIG MONEY. So let me break it down so even the Soros trolls understand. ObamaCare guts SS and medicare reserve money by 750 Billion. Which ends these programs as we know them. AARP publicly backs ObamaCare. Seniors confused about OCare but trust AARP and their massive ad campaign for OCare. AARP contributes to re-election AARP becomes insurance provided for OCare. Unleashes host of insurance options that Seniors will be needing to make decisions about in next 2-3 years. Complicate the choices for Seniors so they fall back on who they have trusted in the past. Still unaware of the great deception perpetrated by AARP. OCARE fully enacted 2014. AARP gets steady $$$ insurance income now (not $16 membership fees for whoever posted that line above). SS and MediCare bankrupt (3/4 trillion $ stolen to fund OCare) Result for SENIORS. NO SS or MEDicare it's dissolved or becomes something less. Free OCare that sucks. Pay AARP for supplemental Ins. Prescriptions too expensive to purchase so go without or pay AARP for better plan. AARP richer and more powerful represents Gvmt Seniors - Self rule lost You see they screwed the very people that paid dues for their protection!