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Ryan is the big news. Jennifer Rubin comments.
Heading into the weekend, I’ll leave for publication some thoughts about Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the vice presidential pick whom Right Turn has been touting for some time. In the event Ryan isn’t the pick, what follows will be a historical keepsake.
There are many Democrats and pundits (some overlap there, I agree) who will be puzzled by Mitt Romney’s selection of Ryan as his pick. But it’s no mystery to those who’ve spent time with Ryan and come to understand what makes both men tick.
As for how this came about, I can say that early in the primary season Ryan and his staff worked cooperatively with Romney and his team. Ryan’s effort was not to self-promote, but to urge Romney to be clear and unequivocal in his policy pronouncements. He encouraged Romney to set up the election as one of two competing visions. It was advice Romney was primed to hear, and the candidate’s tax and entitlement reform plans came to resemble Ryan’s to a large degree. The policy views and much of the rhetoric of the two men converged as the primary race continued.
Romney is above all else a problem-solver, a doer and a fixer. Ryan, likewise, is a policy maven who has since 2007 been trying to advance budget, tax and health-care reforms, moving the Republican Party to become the champion of market-based reform. Ryan is a smart man, certainly the smartest in Congress, with an eye for detail and a facility with numbers. Romney prizes brains, precision and the ability to wield numbers. Ryan uses a scalpel, not a sledge hammer in skewering his opposition; Romney likewise uses piles of data to slay his competitors (as he did in the Florida and Arizona GOP primary debates). Ryan is personally and professionally disciplined, a straight arrow with a gee-whiz brand of optimism. Romney is as well.
The joke has been that Ryan could be Romney’s sixth son. He is, to my eye, more the younger brother, the brains and the idea factory for the top of the ticket who will sell himself as the leader best able to execute the Romney-Ryan vision.
The left will be effusive about the opportunity to renew Mediscare. But the Ryan team has been fighting that fight for some time and is perfectly willing to engage President Obama, who has heckled but not lead on entitlement reform. Who better than Ryan to take on the president while Romney sails above the fray?
Ryan has not been a governor or a CEO, but he has led his party and developed an agenda that House and Senate Republicans eventually embraced. He has shown himself to be the most capable conservative in educating the public and fitting specific policies into a bigger theme. That would have made him fully qualified to be at the top of the ticket.
The selection will thrill conservatives, intrigue commentators and surprise, I imagine, the left. So much time has been spent trying to smear Romney personally that Obama and his team may find it difficult to get back to a debate on policy. With Ryan, they will find that doubly hard. Oh, and that debate with Vice President Biden will be a knee-slapper.
Steve Hayward does the honors for Power Line.
… I suspect Ryan is one of the few Republicans Obama genuinely fears; after all, Ryan schooled Obama in Obama’s faux-”health care summit” early last year. (Obama does not look pleased in the video.) David Brooks reports, by the way, that Obama never picks up the phone to try to talk with Ryan. Ryan is not simply fearless about the issues, he also gets the larger picture, and can talk about the larger picture in a way that Kemp often fell short. Ask Kemp about any other question than taxes, and you’d often hear a rambling answer that tied inner city education problems to the gold standard. That’s why his presidential prospects withered. Ryan, on the other hand, has immense facility to talk about the broader principles of the republic; he’s not just a number-crunching bean counter.
Check out the opening to his speech to CPAC this year:
“There are those who say modern society is too complicated for the average man or woman to deal with. This is a long-standing argument, but we heard it more frequently after the mortgage credit collapse and financial meltdown in 2008. They say we need more experts and technocrats making more of our economic decisions for us. And they argue for less “political interference” with the enlightened bureaucrats … by which they mean less objection by the people to the overregulation of society.
If we choose to have a federal government that tries to solve every problem, then as long as society keeps growing more complex, government must keep on growing right along with it. The rule of law by the people must be reduced and the arbitrary discretion of experts expanded. . .
If the average American can’t handle complexity in his or her own life, and only government experts can … then government must direct the average American about how to live his or her life. Freedom becomes a diminishing good. But there’s a major flaw in this “progressive’” argument, and it’s this. It assumes there must be someone or some few who do have all the knowledge and information. We just have to find, train, and hire them to run the government’s agencies.
Friedrich Hayek called this collectivism’s “fatal conceit.” The idea that a few bureaucrats know what’s best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of free individuals interacting in a free market is both false and arrogant. It has guided collectivists for two centuries down the road to serfdom — and the road is littered with their wrecked utopias. The plan always fails!”
Hmm, who does this remind me of? Oh yeah, that guy we call the Gipper, who said this in his first inaugural address:
“From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? …”
Charles Krauthammer makes the case for running against Obama’s ideas rather than his record. Of course, his dismal record is the result of the foolish ideas.
There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.
The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of an additional $5 trillion of accumulated debt.
The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.
Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?
Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc. etc.
Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat? …
As we said in these pages upon Obama’s election four years ago;
Americans have much to be proud of today. The election of an African-American to the highest office in the land is an outstanding achievement. A testament to the open minded tolerance of this country’s citizens; at least, the majority of them.
Do you think the press and the rest of the world will stop telling us how racist we are? Maybe now they’ll notice that the American people had already moved on.
Nineteen years ago Virginia elected the first black governor in the country Then, Pickerhead was proud to vote for the Democrat Doug Wilder over the hapless Marshall Coleman. This time however, it is discouraging to see a doctrinaire leftist selected by the voters. Nothing but trouble, follows in the wake of officials who use the state’s power to compel and direct behavior.
And, this is second time the Dems have given us a president who throws a baseball like a girl. What’s with that?
Karl Rove says the fact that Romney is even now, means he is ahead.
Wednesday’s Gallup poll had President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney essentially tied, with Mr. Obama at 47% and Mr. Romney at 46%. That’s good news for the challenger: Mr. Romney has absorbed a punishing three-month Obama television barrage that drained the incumbent’s war chest. Historically, undecided voters tend to break late for the challenger.
Mr. Romney and his campaign have also raised their game. After Mr. Obama declared on July 13 that “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” Mr. Romney went on offense, saying the following Tuesday in Pennsylvania that the notion entrepreneurs didn’t build their businesses was “insulting.” Wednesday in Ohio, Mr. Romney attacked Mr. Obama for not having met with his Jobs Council for six months. Thursday in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney belittled the White House’s explanation that the president had failed to do so because he “has a lot on his plate.” The following Tuesday in Nevada before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Obama over cuts in defense and veterans care.
Each time, Mr. Romney’s message was delivered in the morning and dominated the day’s coverage. That change appears now to be standard procedure for Team Romney. …
Bryan Preston in Pajamas Media posts on why the Obama folks ran with the ad that suggest Romney was the cause of a women’s death.
… we’re dealing with something in the Obama campaign that we haven’t seen much at the top of American life, except in the worst moments of the Clinton era. We’re dealing with a president who is entirely without any sense of ethics, honor or morals. He has lived a lie for most if not all of his life, hiding his true political convictions in gauzy language that makes him appear reasonable and moderate. Having lived a lie, what’s one more lie, in the service of keeping himself in power? What’s one more lie if, in Obama’s mind, it accomplishes the “good” of keeping Romney out of power?
The danger for the Obama camp is that they risk going over a tipping point. There is a point at which the negativity becomes absurd, and instead of depressing the opponent’s vote, angers the opponent’s supporters and draws the undecided over to the opponent’s side. No one can really put a finger on where that point is, but it’s real and we saw the effect of reaching that point in the Texas Senate run-off last week. The Dewhurst campaign went too far into negative territory, no one really believed their last-minute attacks, and the backlash ended up ensuring that Cruz would win running away. Obama risks the same dynamic hitting him.
The Obama campaign has gone from accusing Romney of boyhood bullying to adulthood felony, to being a murderer in all but name. What accusation is left to throw at him? There aren’t many, but rest assured that the Obama campaign and its allies will find one.
Another government pay outrage from California; meter maids making almost $100,000 a year.
When contemplating the many reasons cities in California and elsewhere are venturing closer to bankruptcy, look no further than the relatively lucrative and often-unjustifiable salaries bestowed on municipal employees – and the lofty pension benefits attached to the high pay.
One of the latest examples comes from the California coastal city of Hermosa Beach, where some community service staffers who collect money from parking meters and manage their operations – positions once widely known as “meter maids” – are making nearly $100,000 a year in total compensation, according to city documents.
There are 10 parking enforcement employees for the 1.3-square-mile beach city southwest of downtown Los Angeles, and they pull down some disproportionate compensation, considering their job functions. In fact, the two highest-earning employees for fiscal year 2011-12 are estimated to have made more than $92,000 and $93,000, respectively, according to city documents provided by Patrick “Kit” Bobko, one of five council members and who also serves as mayor pro tem. Those two have supervisory roles. The other eight parking-enforcement employees make from $67,367 to $84,267 in total compensation. …
More silliness from the Cherokee senate candidate.
With all of the talk about tax returns dominating the national news, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren undoubtedly figured she could make some hay against Scott Brown on the topic, and get a little national media attention in the process. Why she thought that Brown, an attorney who has spent 30 years in the National Guard and had just been promoted to the rank of colonel, was wealthy enough to make income-tax returns a big issue is itself a mystery than may never be unraveled.
But unraveled is a great way to describe her attack — after the media pointed out that Brown has already disclosed more years of income-tax returns than Warren has:
Elizabeth Warren demanded Monday that Senator Scott Brown release more of his tax returns. The only problem was that Brown, her Republican rival, had already released six years of tax returns while Warren has refused to release more than four years of her filings.
Now that Brown has been established as the more transparent candidate in the race, will Warren match Brown? Nope: