Morning Jolt - Honey, I Want to Rename Our Sons 'Paul' and 'Ryan'

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

August 30, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. Honey, I Want to Rename Our Sons 'Paul' and 'Ryan'

2. Is the Country Ready for Genuine Romney-Ryan Reforms?

3. The Pre-Ryan Lineup

4. Addendum

Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt.

Enjoy!

Jim

1. Honey, I Want to Rename Our Sons 'Paul' and 'Ryan'

Your mileage may vary; some of my colleagues thought Ryan was just pretty good, and one was pretty disappointed. As mentioned on Campaign Spot, I thought we saw not one but two off-the-charts speeches last night -- the first by Condi Rice (more on her speech below) and the second, and more important, by Paul Ryan.

One good line after another:

"The president is just throwing away money . . . and he's pretty experienced at that."

"Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?"

"These past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What's missing is leadership in the White House"

"The man assumed office nearly four years ago. Isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?"

"President Obama is the kind of president who puts a promise on the record . . . and then calls that the record."

I look at Ryan and am kind of bewildered at how anybody could generate genuine hatred of the guy. Maybe you don't like his idea here and there, maybe you wonder if he's old enough or experienced enough to be a heartbeat away from becoming commander in chief. Maybe he comes across as too perfect or something. But I don't understand how you can NOT admire his willingness to tackle the tough issues that so many lawmakers prefer to pretend don't exist.

I also don't understand how you can look at some sort of batty creature of the Senate cloakroom like Joe Biden, who seems to be unable to go a day without making some rhetorical pratfall that embarrasses himself, the president, the administration and the country, and say, "Boy, I feel better with that guy."

Most of the reviews were pretty darn positive:

Howard Fineman: "'Like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind.' This is the real risk to the president. He's connecting big time with these people here."

Toby Harnden: "Great performance by Ryan so far: humour, passion, feeling, confidence, principles, tough indictment of Obama."

Julian D: "Biden will go into witness protection before the VP debate."

Ace: "This isn't even fair. I'm serious, this weekend, "Replace Biden" reaches fever pitch. They have to do *something.* . . . Most effective restatement of "You did build that," ever. The details of opening the doors at 5 in the morning. Not even fair."

David Freddoso: "Only Paul Ryan can get an applause line out of a percentage of GDP."

Jim Pethokoukis: "Maybe the greatest performance by a bowman since English at the Battle of Agincourt."

2. Is the Country Ready for Genuine Romney-Ryan Reforms?

Periodically I'll still feel a sense of disbelief that Paul Ryan is the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

It's not that it's a bad choice by any stretch of the imagination -- the last few weeks have shown us that. But it sure as heck is a high-risk pick. The selection automatically made the Romney campaign's mission in its first term to be entitlement reform and serious budget cuts. That's always been easier in theory and rhetoric than in practice. There's a reason politicians were terrified of entitlement reform for decades; cycle after cycle, Medi-scare tactics worked. They worked, and they worked, and they worked, no matter how badly the budgetary projections for that program and Medicare and Social Security worsened.

Tuesday night, Chris Christie said of the Democrats, "They believe seniors will always put themselves ahead of their grandchildren." Well, they have a pretty good body of evidence for that belief.

Maybe it changes this cycle. I hope it does, and there's quite a bit of evidence, so far, that the era of effective "Medi-scare" attacks is coming to an end. Politico, late last night:

Democrats thought Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal would shift the focus away from Mitt Romney, terrify the elderly and take places like Florida and other key states off the table.

That's not happening. Not yet, anyway.

Polls and interviews show that for now, Romney's selection of Ryan hasn't fundamentally shifted the dynamics of a deadlocked race.

The polls leave no question that huge numbers of people oppose the core of Ryan's plan. But they show something else too: Democrats haven't yet been able to turn that opposition into a way to take down the Romney-Ryan ticket.

They've still got time, with millions of dollars in TV ads, three presidential debates and a vice presidential debate to chip away at Ryan. And the economy is still the most important issue for voters -- so important that some voters who don't like the Ryan Medicare plan may vote for Romney anyway because they like him better on the economy, pollsters say.

But Republicans have used years of attacks on the president's health care law as a model for a fresh assault on Obama's own Medicare record, charging that he cut the cherished entitlement program to pay for "Obamacare."

And so far, that seems to have at least neutralized Democrats' attacks on Ryan.

"Medicare just may not be the killer issue that a lot of people thought," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "That doesn't mean it won't be, but so far it is not."

But we're not out of the woods yet, and let's remember what one of the central points of the Ryan plan is: WE DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING FOR SENIORS. One of the reasons the Ryan plan isn't as toxic among seniors as other past entitlement-reform proposals is because it doesn't actually change anything for the voting demographic that's most reluctant to change anything.

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rodgers touted Ryan as "a man with the courage of his convictions, a man not afraid to tackle the toughest problems." He's not the one I'm worried about!

Because Romney's pick of Ryan really brought this election down to the core question: Are we willing to live with less government or not? Are we willing to turn away the free stuff offered by Leviathan or not? Are we willing to do things for ourselves, or do we like that siren's call of government being Santa Claus, offering us everything we want, and promising somebody else will pay for it?

We've all heard of how some Republicans don't live up to the ideals of limited government -- farm-state conservatives who deem their ethanol subsidies and farm price supports as vital, the companies that love their special provisions in the tax code, regulations, and what we call "corporate welfare"; the Republican congressmen who still cling (bitterly?) to their earmarks and pork. If it doesn't end -- our wasteful crap and their wasteful crap -- the future of the country is shot.

Considering how the crowd ROARED when Ryan said, "we welcome this debate. We will WIN this debate," the Republicans, at least the ones in Tampa, are ready to put this choice before the country.

3. The Pre-Ryan Lineup

The early offerings Wednesday night had a really difficult time catching fire. It makes sense that right after I warned about raving about or panning every speech, I came out of the arena Wednesday night thinking that everybody was either really good or really disappointing.

Stu Burguiere, Glenn Beck's executive producer, said before Rice began, "The vast majority of speakers tonight should have been rescheduled to the day that got cancelled."

Dave Weigel: "Tonight's theme is 'Hah, You Thought Romney Was Gonna Pick One of THESE Guys for Veep?'" By the way, Rob Portman's speech wasn't bad, it just didn't break through the noise.

What happened to Tim Pawlenty? Urgh. Awful jokes. Every convention needs its "let's take it to the other guy" speech, and every convention needs its funny speech. In the past, Pawlenty has excelled in these roles. Last night, he was awful -- bad timing, bad delivery, just not that funny, no flow to it at all.

Mike Huckabee was pretty mild for the first half or so of his speech, but then, in Ramesh's words, he "gathered force."

"I care less about where Mitt Romney goes to church than where he takes this country." That is a great line.

Then Huckabee compared Obama's desire to be credited for trying to giving every kid a trophy for showing up, and snickered that he was the first man to be given the Nobel Peace Prize for "potential."

Nathan Wurtzel: "Learn how to copy Huck's tone of attacking without sounding mean . . . and NOTHING ELSE."

The crowd gave Condi Rice a ROAR of a welcome. I think in this speech, we got a sense of why the Condi-for-veep talk began after she addressed a group of Romney staff, supporters, and donors in Utah. She is just confidence-inspiring; as she discusses foreign policy, the burden of leadership, the choice to take on those burdens and the consequences of "leading from behind". . . I remember Rich saying that when you saw Rick Santorum talk about complicated issues, you could see he had thought through all of these issues himself. It wasn't the briefers talking through the candidate, it was Santorum showcasing his thinking and analyzing and contemplation himself. Rice offers the same thing when she discusses foreign policy.

What a home run.

"We stand for free peoples and free markets. We will stand and defend them."

"Condi is just ridiculous," Mary Katharine Ham writes, and I'm 99.9 percent sure she means, ridiculously good.

Mollie Hemingway: "WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. Amazing speech. And I'm not a fan of her professionally."

Our friend Charlie Cooke: "The next time my friends and family from England ask me why I am an American conservative, I'm just going to send them Condi's speech."

Doc Zero: "Note that Condi thinks America IS exceptional, not that it could be exceptional after she finishes 'transforming' it."

CNN's John King: "The 'non politician' on tonight's agenda just brought the #gopconvention to a much higher energy level."

Stu Rothenberg: "This is a big speech, not a political one. But it is one that some Republican needed to give. It goes to the heart of GOP views and values."

After that, everyone thought, "poor Susana Martinez." The New Mexico governor looked like she would be easily forgotten, but she ultimately held her own in between two excellent speeches. She knew how to get a roar from the crowd: mention that she used to carry a 357 Magnum. "Yes, that gun weighed more than I did."

She later discussed her career, and noted that she began to specialize in prosecuting child-abuse and child-murder cases. She later discussed testifying against her boss, the district attorney; when he fired her, she ran against him and beat him in a landslide. America's toughest governor?

4. Addendum

Charlie Cooke, responding to the everything-Republicans-do-is-racist coverage from MSNBC, and the cavalcade of dynamite minority and women convention speakers: "One of the things I've learned this week is that Republicans are the most incompetent racists ever. They're just bloody awful at it."

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