Choosing Paul Ryan is a game-changer. Ask the Chicago Gang and its publicists in the mainstream media. They’re terrified.
They know that when Mitt Romney chose Ryan for his vice president, it re-defined the Romney campaign overnight.
It proved Mitt was not as boring, cautious and moderate as conservative Republicans feared and the Obama Left hoped.
In one bold, smart move, Romney’s VP choice makes it clear that this election is about one thing — the economy.
And there is no better person on the planet to discuss that issue than Ryan, the young, articulate, spirited, openly Reaganesque conservative who heads up the House Budget Committee and is the leading Republican deficit hawk in Congress.
With Ryan as his VP choice, Romney also took a huge step in redefining what the Republican Party is and reminding everyone what it’s supposed to stand for.
For decades Reagan conservatives have been wondering what has happened to the GOP my father loved. He worked hard to shape it into a party that clearly and proudly stood for smaller government, more freedom, free enterprise and a strong military.
But for two decades Republican politicians have been trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. The GOP my father left behind lost its way, lost its nerve and chose to betray many of its core principles to win elections.
By choosing Ryan, Romney has ended the era of Republicrat fuzziness overnight. It makes me think Mitt and his advisers have decided that the way to defeat Obama was to heed the advice my father gave to the GOP in 1975 at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Republicans, disheartened by the post-Watergate thrashing they got at the polls in 1974, were being urged by moderates to water down (i.e., liberal-up) their party’s principles to broaden its appeal to voters.
My father told them not to further “blur” the distinctions between the two parties but to “revitalize” the GOP by reasserting its conservative principles and raising them “to full view.”
He challenged Republicans to raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear” that their party believed in “a free market as the greatest provider for the people,” not socialism.
The conservative conventioneers took my father’s wise message to heart, but the nation’s voters didn’t. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and the country got four years of economic malaise and folly in the Middle East that did not end until my father was elected in 1980 — as an unabashed conservative.
America today is truly at a crossroads. This election is going to decide the direction we take for the next 50 years. For the first time in a while, the American people will have a clear choice.
Do you want the USA to go down the Obama Expressway to Greece or, God forbid, California? Or do you want to go down the Romney-Ryan-Reagan Freeway to freedom, growth and prosperity for all people?
It’s up to the American people to decide where they want to go. It’s up to Romney and Ryan — R & R, two letters that look pretty good together, I’d say — to sell their message of conservatism.
Americans can’t afford to wait for someone to come along four years from now and fix the damage Obama has already done.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation
Wow, it only took 7 paragraphs before he mentioned his adopted father!
This is actually a cohesive op ed. Usually his jr high school quality run on sentences and non-comprehesive paragraphs make no sense at all!
This was definitely written by some intern or other person.
Of course, he is wrong on everything, but at least he makes sense this time.
1) They keep calling bad VP picks “game changers” They mean “losers” and no one is terrified. (That “Chicago gang” lie is pretty pathetic)
2) Some “bold” move. This guy took all the talking points at once. Of course he does not know what “bold” means if he thinks this is it.
3) Deficit hawk? Is he on LSD??????? Ryan voted for EVERYTHING that made the deficit. Before rethugs destroyed the American financial future, he voted for unpaid for tax breaks mostly for millionaires TWICE, Two unpaid for wars, one completely mishandled and the other based on horrible lies that have killed many thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, but that is OK because they are brown, the unpaid for giveaway to pharmaceutical companies and his budget now is going to add at least 4 TRILLION according to ANY CREDIBLE SOURCE.
DEFICIT HAWK???? That would be funny if it weren’t tragic. And practically the whole “LIBRUL” media following along. Some LIBRUL media! Only medium right makes you liberal?
4) “Obama expressway to Greece”? Is he so stupid he doesn’t know how stupid he sounds? Oh yeah, who are we talking about here. He idolizes the man that told Christians that “Greed is good”, installed trickle-down to no one economics, negotiated with terrorists, cut and run in Lebanon but was a nice bully to Grenada, sold weapons to Iran (and he knew about it despite the lies) favored racism and oligarchy.
Thanks for all that America destroying.
If he thinks rethugs (who are no longer conservatives, they are very radically right, and him lying about it will not make them “centrist”) are for prosperity, look at what they did in 2007. When the DEPRESSION STARTED. And look at how rethugs cheer when they get bad economy numbers like more children are going hungry YAY, especially minority children YAY and more poverty in general YAY, and less jobs for all YAY, and more tax breaks for billionaires YAY and less money for middle class YAY and no more medicare YAY and destroy social security so the main cause of death for the elderly poor is starvation, freezing to death and heat stroke YAY! We hate that uppity black man in the white house SO MUCH!!! Lets stop people from voting because we hate democracy SO MUCH YAY
The modern day rethuglicon party disgusts me and many others and idiots like “raygun is my DAD” are the worst!!!
UGH
Ryan is a BOLD choice?
What is BOLD about voting for two unfunded wars, unfunded Medicare Part D,
unfunded TARP, unfunded tax cuts, and extension of tax cuts, adding 4 TRILLION DOLLARS to the deficit.
What is BOLD about voting AGAINST equal pay for women,
What is BOLD about trying to re define the definition of rape,
What is BOLD about suggesting putting social security in the stock market,
What is BOLD about cutting medicaid and food stamps to the bone, thus
affecting our most vulnerable citizens,
What is BOLD about phasing out medicare for seniors, and
What is BOLD about giving HUGE tax cuts to the rich, thereby adding to the
tax burden of the middle class?
Smart choice — don’t think so ! ! !