Vice presidential picks are always judged by their effect on the coming election. They rarely have any.
This time could be different. The Democrats’ Mediscare barrage is already in full swing. Paul Ryan, it seems, is determined to dispossess grandma, then toss her over a cliff. If the charge is not successfully countered, goodbye Florida.
Republicans have a twofold answer. First, hammer home that their plan affects no one over 55, let alone 65. Second, go on offense. Point out that President Obama cuts Medicare by $700 billion to finance Obamacare.
It’s a sweet judo throw: Want to bring up Medicare, supposedly our weakness? Fine. But now you’ve got to debate Obamacare, your weakness — and explain why you are robbing granny’s health care to pay for your pet project.
If Romney-Ryan can successfully counterattack Mediscare, the Ryan effect becomes a major plus. Because:
- Ryan nationalizes the election and makes it ideological, reprising the 2010 dynamic that delivered a “shellacking” to the Democrats.
- If the conversation is about big issues, Obama cannot hide from his dismal economic record and complete failure of vision. In Obama’s own on-camera commercial — “the choice … couldn’t be bigger” — what’s his big idea? A 4.6 point increase in the marginal tax rate of 2 percent of the population. That’s it? That’s his program? For a country with stagnant growth, ruinous debt and structural problems crying out for major entitlement and tax reform? Obama’s “plan” would cut the deficit from $1.20 trillion to $1.12 trillion. It’s a joke.
- Image. Ryan, fresh and 42, brings youth, energy and vitality — the very qualities Obama projected in 2008 and has by now depleted. “Hope and change” has become “the other guy killed a steelworker’s wife.” From transcendence to the political gutter in under four years. A new Olympic record.
While Ryan’s effect on 2012 is as yet undetermined — it depends on the success or failure of Mediscare — there is less doubt about the meaning of Ryan’s selection for beyond 2012. He could well become the face of Republicanism for a generation.
There’s a history here. By choosing George H.W. Bush in 1980, Ronald Reagan gave birth to a father-son dynasty that dominated the presidential scene for three decades. The Bush name was on six of seven consecutive national tickets.
When Dwight Eisenhower picked Richard Nixon in 1952, he turned a relatively obscure senator into a dominant national figure for a quarter-century, appearing on the presidential ticket in five of six consecutive elections.
Even losing VP candidates can ascend to party leader and presumptive presidential nominee. Ed Muskie so emerged in 1968, until he melted down in New Hampshire in 1972. Walter Mondale so emerged in 1980 and won the presidential nomination four years later. (The general election was another story.)
Winning is even better. Forty percent of 20th-century presidents were former VPs: Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Bush (41).
Before Aug. 11, Ryan already was the party’s intellectual leader and de facto parliamentary leader — youngest-ever House Budget Committee chairman whose fiscal blueprint has driven congressional debate for two years. Now, however, he is second only to Romney as the party’s undisputed political leader.
And while Romney is the present, Ryan is the future. Romney’s fate will be determined on Nov. 6. Ryan’s presence, assuming he acquits himself well in the campaign, will extend for decades.
Ryan’s importance is enhanced by his identity as a movement conservative. Reagan was the first movement leader in modern times to achieve the presidency. Like him, Ryan represents a new kind of conservatism for his time.
Reagan rejected the moderate accommodationism represented by Gerald Ford, the sitting president Reagan nearly overthrew in 1976. Ryan represents a new constitutional conservatism of limited government and individual opportunity that carried Republicans to victory in 2010, not just as a rejection of Obama’s big-government hyper-liberalism but also as a significant departure from the philosophically undisciplined, idiosyncratically free-spending “compassionate conservatism” of Obama’s Republican predecessor.
Ryan’s role is to make the case for a serious approach to structural problems — a hardheaded, sober-hearted conservatism that puts to shame a reactionary liberalism that, with Greece in our future, offers handouts, bromides and a 4.6 percent increase in tax rates.
If Ryan does it well, win or lose in 2012, he becomes a dominant national force. Mild and moderate Mitt Romney will have shaped the conservative future for years to come.
The cunning of history. Or if you prefer, sheer capriciousness.
Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post. Readers may contact him at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
6/11/2012 – Romney/Ryan will win. And we will get the Senate back.
Romney/Ryan ticket…. we’ll say anything to get elected or more aptly named the Flip/Flop ticket.
And then you woke up.
It’s not happening. Wait until the debates and they actually have to commit to something solid and real instead of their vague pipe dreams.
Romney/Ryan will win 206 electoral votes. Sadly for Romney/Ryan, President Obama and Vice President Biden will win 332 electoral votes.
If wishing made it so, EJ, the Red Sox would be leading their division. Wake up, smell the coffee, and prepare for a short wait on Election Day before you get the sad news.
Remember, you read it here first.
Vulture and Voucher haven’t a snowballs chance in H@#!
“Republicans have a twofold answer. First, hammer home that their plan affects no one over 55, let alone 65. Second, go on offense. Point out that President Obama cuts Medicare by $700 billion to finance Obamacare.”
Thats More like a “Blindfold” answer!
They convienently left out the fact that changes in Social Security are not limited by age as the Disability provision is not!
There are Many People under the age of 55 on Social Security Disability!
Also,Everyone who is “under” the age of 55 will someday be “over” it, so it does affect people over 55 !
The 700 billion supposed CUT to medicare was not a cut to Medicare Benefits it was a cut to projected funding due to projected savings by changes in laws that ended Fraud and Waste to Insurance Companies and Providers!
You know, that dreaded waste that the right continually claims to be fighting against!
The Truth is that they love waste when it goes to insurance companies! When Democrats put an end that they try to spin it into Cuts in Benefits for Partisan Political Advantage!
These people are pathological liars, and anyone who beleives them is just plain guh–guh—gulible!
If we can’t send these snake oil salesmen to prison with Bernie Madoff where they belong lets at least —————-vote them out !
And they leave out the fact that they use the same $700 billion dollar savings to Medicare to “fix” it.
This is trash. The Romney Ryan plan is to make vague promises and no specific details. They screech when you ask them for something solid and simply deflect instead of answering the question. The truth is, they don’t have real solid plans, at least not ones they’re willing to admit to before the election. It’s a joke.
Ryan’s plan hits the middle and lower class and helps the wealthy. He also is hoping to impose his own form of sharia law on women. He’s co-sponsored several bills that are treacherous to women – he and Aiken are buds. Who will vote for R&R? White men. Latinos, African-Americans, and women will not vote Republican this year.
These two men have been proven to be liars. Ryan said he never asked for stimulus money and he did and it was very easy to prove and he had to backtrack and hem and haw. They go around saying Obama (just as Krauthammer said) took 700 billion dollars from Medicare but those funds had nothing to do with what beneficiaries get, it cut providers’ money. Ryan had the same 700 billion from Medicare in his budget – only that DOES come from beneficiaries. Ryan supported the Republican view that abortion should not be allowed even for rape and incest survivors, but now is backtracking and saying yes it should be allowed.
They lie. They obfuscate. They suppress. They are not for the middle class or for women or for people of color or any other minority. They are for the wealthy and that is all.