Joan Walsh: Why does the GOP hide its agenda?

Ryan stays mum about his budget-busting "Roadmap" while Bachmann peddles debunked myths in rebutting Obama's SOTU
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/2011/01/25/joan_walsh_sotu

Prepared for President Obama to give a "centrist" State of the Union address to prove he can work with intransigent Republicans, I was pleasantly surprised. They may be small things, but a few points stood out. I was happy he pledged that "we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans," adding "Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break." I just hope he fights to end those tax cuts in 2012 even though he didn't in 2010. I'm glad Obama promised to cut taxpayer subsidies for oil companies (even though almost no one clapped.)

Sadly, it took a little bit of courage to speak with compassion about the children of illegal immigrants or to say "American Muslims are part of our family." I liked a lot of what he said about investment in education, transportation and infrastructure, but I have no idea how that squares with his promise to freeze domestic spending for five years.

The president was lucky to have not one but two GOP rebuttals, and they were equally strange and dishonest. Rep. Paul Ryan railed against the deficit without proposing even one specific cut. He didn't talk about his own infamous "Roadmap," maybe because most analysts have called it a budget buster, even though it essentially replaces Social Security and Medicare with vouchers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Ryan's plan wouldn't balance the budget until 2063, and would add $62 trillion to the debt by then. Citizens for Tax Justice said Ryan's Roadmap raises taxes on 9 out of 10 taxpayers and while slashing them for the wealthiest.

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Tea Party leader Michele Bachmann followed Ryan, and CNN chose to broadcast her talk while other networks didn't. Bachmann has actually proposed budget cuts – eradicating the Department of Education and saving money (?) by repealing the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation act. But she didn't talk specifics in her SOTU rebuttal, either. Luckily, she didn't get into American history, after her disastrous Iowa speech sugarcoating slavery and otherwise distorting the American past. (Note to Bachmann: George Jefferson was definitely not one of the founders.) She flashed Perot-style charts blaming rising unemployment solely on Obama, and ranted about 16,500 new IRS agents supposedly hired to enforce Obamacare (Factcheck.org has already debunked that myth).