PrairiePundit

Palm Beach Post: Not long after Democratic National Committee ChairwomanDebbie Wasserman Schultz told seniors at Century Village of Boca Raton they could be socked with $6,300 a year in higher Medicare costs under Mitt Romney, Vice President Joe Bidenacknowledged the figure is based on an analysis of an outdated plan. But Biden argued it’s fair for Democrats to keep using the number, anyway. U.S. Rep. Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, was one of the speakers who took the stage before Biden on Friday at the heavily Democratic condo community. “We know that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan unapologetically support an extreme budget plan that would end Medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher program, shred the health care safety net that exists for our seniors and increase their premiums, your premiums, by more than $6,300 a year. That is unacceptable,” Wasserman Schultz told the senior-dominated crowd of about 800. The $6,300 figure Wasserman Schultz cited is based on an old vers...

NY Times: Challenged on Medicare, G.O.P. Loses Ground   President Obama and his campaign are arguing that the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare would leave older Americans vulnerable to rising health care costs. I a sane world the media would be more upset about this fraudulent attack on an attempt to save the Medicare program than were about Romney's sensible objection to the groveling statement from the Cairo embassy. They should at least not that Obama has no viable solution for the coming Medicare bankruptcy.  That will in fact leave people with out healthcare when they need it most.  Obama would continue to squeeze providers to the point they drop out of the program.  They is bad for the health care system and for patients who would be put on an ever longer waiting lest to see the few providers who are willing to put up with Obama's control freak approach to the problem. The Romney Ryan plan would actually provide much bet...

Daily Mail on Sunday: President Obama claims Mitt Romney has locked himself into 'extreme positions' on Medicare The might even sound more intelligent if they would stop using the word "extreme" as a pejorative to describe policies they disagree with.  Try telling us why your plan is better Barack, oh that's right, you don't have a plan.  Now that seems pretty extreme since the program is going to be broke in a few years and you do not want to do anything to stop that.

Fox News: The Obama campaign would like voters to believe that Paul Ryan's Medicare plan would "end Medicare as we know it" -- privatizing the whole system and costing seniors more than $6,000 extra a year. But the campaign, even before Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney's running mate, has effectively been running against the wrong Ryan plan. The president's accusations largely refer to Ryan's 2011 plan, ignoring the fact that the House Budget Committee chairman rolled out a different version in 2012 -- taking into account Democratic critiques. Though the 2012 plan is more moderate, Obama and his surrogates have all but ignored the newer version as they amp up their accusations against the Romney-Ryan ticket. Most glaringly, the campaign has omitted a key point. While Ryan's 2011 plan proposes to give seniors a government payment to buy private insurance, his 2012 plan offers seniors a choice. Under the blueprint, seniors could use the payment to buy priv...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Karl Rove: ... Polling by American Crossroads (an independent expenditure group with which I'm associated) showed that while Ms. Hochul's Medicare attacks galvanized Democrats, they swayed few independents. Among voters who had an unfavorable view of Ms. Corwin, just 20% focused on Medicare, with most Democrats already voting for Ms. Hochul. A larger percentage of those voters with an unfavorable opinion of Ms. Corwin's campaign—26%—were concerned about an ugly on-camera incident involving her chief of staff yelling at Mr. Davis in a parking lot. These voters felt Mr. Davis was being unfairly harassed. The defection of these overwhelmingly Republican and independent voters doomed Ms. Corwin. That's not to say Medicare didn't play an important role. Ms. Hochul pummeled Ms. Corwin over it. The GOP candidate did not respond with TV ads until the campaign's closing week, and only then with an ad many voters thought lacked ...