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Political Hay
Don’t Look Back
Choosing Paul Ryan makes it pointless for Mitt Romney to try to return to his Massachusetts ways — except as a fiscal problem-solver.
What a difference a few days make. Last week Mitt Romney press secretary Andrea Saul appeared to speak well of the Obamacare-like Massachusetts health care law. Defending her boss against a pro-Obama super PAC’s scurrilous charges of complicity in the death of an uninsured woman, Saul noted that the deceased would have been covered under Romneycare.
The conservative reaction was swift. “OMG. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election,” Red State’s Erick Erickson tweeted. “Wow.” Rush Limbaugh called the comment a “potential goldmine for Obama supporters.” Ann Coulter — a defender of Romneycare, oddly enough — clamored for Saul to be fired. But Romney himself was invoking his past health care reform successes on the stump in Iowa, suggesting Saul wasn’t entirely freelancing.
By Saturday, all was (almost) forgiven. Romney’s decision to name Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, as his running mate doesn’t by any means guarantee he would govern as a serious entitlement reformer if elected. But it does ensure there will be a serious discussion of the country’s fiscal crisis. Adding Ryan to the Republican ticket means Romney can’t avoid that debate even if he wants to.
The uncharacteristic boldness of the selection — Romney isn’t known for his risk-taking — raises hopes that perhaps the Republican nominee does want to get serious about spending. Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts in response to a budget crisis. In his vice-presidential announcement speech, Ryan paid tribute to Romney’s fiscal stewardship.
“As governor of Massachusetts,” Ryan said of Romney, “he worked with Democrats and Republicans to balance budgets with no tax increases, lower unemployment, increase income and improve people’s lives.” Noticeably absent from this list is Romney’s health care partnership with Ted Kennedy that later inspired elements of the president’s Affordable Care Act.
“It’s not that dissimilar to Obamacare,” Ryan told a TAS/Americans for Tax Reform breakfast last spring when asked about the Romney health care law. “And you probably know that I’m not a big fan of Obamacare.” Ryan disagreed with the individual mandate not just from the perspective of constitutional law but as a matter of policy.
“My uncle’s a cardiologist in Boston and I’ve talked to a lot of health folks up there who — what’s happening now is because costs are getting out of control, premiums are increasing in Massachusetts and now you have a bureaucracy that is having to put all these controls and now rationing on the system,” Ryan said on C-SPAN in 2010. He acknowledged earlier this year that Romneycare contained the “seeds” of Obamacare.
Democrats will use these quotes and others to blur the distinctions between the candidates on health care. But Ryan actually gives Romney the opportunity to move beyond Romneycare. There is perhaps no Republican leader in the country more associated with promoting a freer market in medical care than Ryan. Even the Democrats will eventually prefer to join that argument rather than remain in the Romneycare morass.
Romney has a well-documented tendency to want to have things both ways. That is why Eric Fehrnstrom created such a firestorm when he made his “Etch a Sketch” comments, suggesting that Romney could wipe the slate clean for the general election and in the process delete the conservative positions he took in the primaries. Romney does have the temptation of switching between the “progressive” who could win in Massachusetts and the “severely conservative” politician who clinched the GOP nomination.
For the duration of the campaign, at least, Romney can’t look back. He can alter the details of Ryan’s plans for Medicare. He can cut spending faster or slower. He can try to balance the budget sooner or later. But Romney is going to essentially have to run on the plan’s main principles.
Perhaps Romney has yet to receive the memo. CNN reported that Romney insiders say the presidential nominee will not embrace fully the Ryan plan. But the media could also have it wrong. During the primaries, Romney was more supportive of the Ryan budget than many rivals to his right.
Either way, Romney has committed himself to running as a strong fiscal conservative. The Democratic attack lines are clear: the Romney-Ryan ticket is made up of heartless budget-cutters who will throw old ladies into the streets to succumb to exposure and preexisting conditions. Romney is the evil outsourcing vulture capitalist, Ryan (in the words of the political geniuses at Esquire) “the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin.”
The Republican National Convention will focus on proving that Romney is no vulture and Ryan is no zombie, granny-starving or otherwise. But beyond humanizing the ticket, they must turn these negatives into positives. Romney is the candidate with a proven track record of turning around financially troubled institutions and allowing them to grow once more. Ryan is the man with the plan to save Social Security and Medicare. Without Romney-Ryan, the argument must run, we are Greece.
Paul Ryan has already made conservative criticism of Romney disappear as quickly as a Washington budget surplus. Now they must engage swing voters. Even after becoming “severely conservative,” Romney has often behaved like a liberal in the worst sense: a man who won’t take his own side in an argument.
That’s not really an option for a successful campaign. Running with Ryan simply underscores the fact. The Etch a Sketch is broken. It’s time to paint a new picture.
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
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Jack in Wi| 8.13.12 @ 6:59AM
Very good commentary. Push the economy and fiscal control. Forget about Romneycare, and war. It's all about the economy and Obama's failure, and with energy policy as prices for gasoline go through the roof. In no way talk of bombing Iran. No sane person wants that or the economic problems that would cause. Let the pact funds strip the hide off Obama on his radical anti religion and pro homosexuality and abortion agenda.
DTOM| 8.13.12 @ 7:16AM
I am waiting for the photoshopped, sure-to-go-viral video, of Paul Ryan pushing the wheelchair off the cliff with the last frame revealing that the old woman in the wheel chair is really Joe Biden!!!
C'mon, video kids!
DTOM
DTOM| 8.13.12 @ 7:27AM
PS - anyone serious about resolving all of the problems associated with the Middle East and the increasingly virulent spread of violent Islamicism will take the first and last steps necessary to end their momentum. If the US wants peace, all we have to do is defund the oil states. It'll take twenty minutes in a White House Press conference. President Romney announces that in ten years we may or may not have a man on the moon again, but we WILL be energy self sufficient and an exporter of oil and coal - we'll keep the gas, thank you. That would drive oil to $30 a barrel overnight. And by drilling in ANWR, off shore Alaska, and on the continental shelves we could make the 1950's look like the 1930's!
Not sure that that'd work? Remember the fiscal crisis in the last months of Bush's term. Sure you do. But maybe you forgot that oil had gotten to $142/bbl, and gasoline was over $4/gallon when George W. held a presser and announced that the US was going to open up drilling on the continental shelves off our coasts and oil fell over $100/bbl to$35 and gas went to 1.89/gal. IN 2008!
Go Mitt Go Paul Go!
DTOM
PS If you've ever seen one of those stupid windmills think about this, you can get more energy out of a single offshore platform than a thousand stupid windmills and kill no birds doing it. This is truly a no-brainer.
Pecos Pete| 8.13.12 @ 10:53AM
DTOM: Agreed!
Evelyn @ 77| 8.13.12 @ 8:49AM
Get off the dole.
Tear up your Medicare cards.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.13.12 @ 9:09AM
Rush Limbaugh must be busting his buttons waiting to get on the air. I hope each of you will catch his opening monologue. 11 AM central time
Whoooooeee!
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.13.12 @ 9:30AM
PS: Thus far, Rush has been sympathetic with Romney's reticence...patient too.
I honestly don't know if Rush can get his lips over his teeth today.
If Mitt won't make McCain's mistake and muzzle Ryan in the clinches...Ryan will seriously kick ass.
Cutie Carrie etc. probably won't even want a piece of him.
All you so-called conservatives and Libertarians out there...get your head out of your ass. This is our last chance short of a revolution...VOTE ROMNEY/Ryan!
Just Curious| 8.13.12 @ 11:11AM
Whoooooeee!
Sounds like a hog-callin' yell to me.
Just Curious| 8.13.12 @ 11:12AM
Callin' all hogs to tune in to the Boss Hog radio show.
Teflon93 | 8.13.12 @ 9:25AM
Conservatives are simply demonstrating why it is the Rockefeller Republicans are still in charge of the GOP: we will whore our votes at bargain basement prices.
Moreover, some of us are utterly immune to the facts. Paul Ryan has become John Boehner's lapdog. And that is why he is Mitt Romney's running mate.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.13.12 @ 9:36AM
Teflon,
(great descriptor by the way), You lie with such sliceryness playing pretend you are conservative.
From now on, you are my scroll button. You have nothing to say except whining.
Teflon93 | 8.13.12 @ 10:14AM
Ken, you're nothing but a jersey-waving GOP apparatchik. Unlike yourself, I have a spine. I vote for conservatives---period. You vote for anyone with the magic (-R) after his name. You live up to your moniker in that there is a long history of a certain stripe of Texan voting for party over principle.
Go look up Ryan's record and stop aping whatever Romney tells you to. Think.
Old ChooChoo| 8.13.12 @ 11:15AM
Ken, old man, what has happened to Margie. You and she had a go-at-it a few months ago.
Is she well? She seems to have deserted AmSpec. I always enjoyed her careening-out-of-control posts--especially on her favorite topic: religion.
Man, did she ever have it in for papists.
C. Vernon Crisler | 8.13.12 @ 11:01AM
For some reason, this article just reminded me of why I hate Romney. Best to focus on Ryan in this campaign.
apnep| 8.13.12 @ 11:30AM
Helloooo. We don't need to focus on what Romeny ISN'T, focus needs to be placed on JOKER that's currently in office! When are people in charge of campaigns gonna get it? Attack and stop being on defense.
Boar Hunter| 8.13.12 @ 11:38AM
LOL, yeah I got that also.
I hate Romney and everything about him.
I like Ryan, but must learn more about him.
I do know he is a bow hunter and that is a surprisingly powerful point in his favor to me.
I watched him make Obama go all pouty face during a six minute U-tube clip on Obama care and that made me like him even more.
Old ChooChoo| 8.13.12 @ 12:23PM
After the November election, he'll have plenty of time to carry his bow and arrows out into the woods to hunt to his heart's content.
This country is not as right-wing as Ryan, and Romney's going to crash because of his VP choice.
We fiscal conservatives are not pleased to have a tea bagger on the ticket.
Drunken Sailor| 8.13.12 @ 12:35PM
"We fiscal conservatives are not pleased to have a tea bagger on the ticket."
Sorry but that makes no sense. Just who would you prefer, Ron Paul?
Marie| 8.13.12 @ 11:59AM
If you take Mitt Romney on his word, he will not run the federal government in the same manner as he ran Mass. It's a tenth amendment thing with Romney, and I hope he sticks to ideology concerning that.