Republican Convention - Days 2 & 3

I also got to watch the better part of the last two evenings of the Republican convention last week.  With the exception of Rand Paul's rousing speech early in the evening in which gave a surprisingly strong endorsement of Romney, the only speeches of the second evening that stood out to me were the final three -- Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan.  I was only half paying attention at the beginning of Rice's speech, but started listening more closely when I realized that she was giving a very eloquent speech that was dazzling the crowd.  She spoke more about domestic policy, including energy and education policy, than I expected.  She spoke movingly of the incredible story of her life, rising from her childhood in segregated Mississippi to become Secretary of State of the United States.  Among her best lines were these:

Ours has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have not believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have not been envious of one another and jealous of each other’s success. Ours has been a belief in opportunity and a constant battle — long and hard — to extend the benefits of the American dream to all — without regard to circumstances of birth.
 

Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico and the first female Hispanic governor in the U.S., spoke next and had the crowd and me cracking up with this story:

Before I ran for District Attorney, two Republicans invited my husband and me to lunch. And I knew a party-switch was exactly what they wanted.

So, I told Chuck, we'll be polite, enjoy a free lunch and then say goodbye.

But we talked about issues-they never used the words Republican, or Democrat, conservative or liberal.

We talked about many issues, like welfare - is it a way of life, or a hand-up?

Talked about the size of government -- how much should it tax families and small businesses?

And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, "I'll be damned, we're Republicans!"
 

But I thought the best speech, not just of the night, but of the entire convention, was Paul Ryan's acceptance speech for nomination for Vice President.  It was a brilliantly written and substantive speech and was delivered masterfully.  It was one of the most devastating critiques of Obama's first term that I have ever heard -- certainly the most effective attack on Obama's record that I heard during the entire convention.  Ryan cut through all the noise and explained simply and clearly why Obama has been a failure.  And he did so without coming across as nasty or angry.  He also managed to sound optimistic about our future and sincere about seeking to address the big problems we face, and he managed to weave in some very personal moments about his family and background as well as some lines that had me laughing out loud.  After so many years of having lackluster speakers on the Republican presidential and vice-presidential tickets, it is so refreshing to have someone on the 2012 ticket who can communicate conservative ideas effectively!  If you have not had the opportunity to watch Ryan's acceptance speech yet, I highly recommend watching it below:

One sign of the effectiveness of Ryan's speech was the fact that Obama and the media immediately began attacking Ryan for the supposed lies in his speech.  A sample media hit job on Ryan is this Yahoo article.  Not surprisingly, Yahoo was wrong and Ryan was right.  On every one of these points:

1. Ryan claimed ObamaCare took $716 billion out of Medicare.  That is TRUE.  Of course the cuts "do not affect Medicare recipients directly," if by directly you mean that ObamaCare doesn’t literally pull cash out of people’s wallets.  ObamaCare takes money away from the Medicare program, which means lower payments to insurance plans and health providers, which means seniors’ health coverage will be directly affected.  This is an actual cut to Medicare.  The budget endorsed by the Romney-Ryan ticket eliminates those cuts to Medicare.  So this cut by Obama would be reversed by Romney.


2. Ryan claimed that that the stimulus was political patronage and cronyism that did nothing to get the economy going.  That is TRUE.  Even Obama was forced to admit those "shovel ready" jobs weren’t so shovel ready after all.  Ryan opposed the stimulus bill and voted against it.  AFTER IT WAS ALREADY PASSED, he tried to make sure his district wasn’t left out.  That doesn’t disprove what Ryan said about the stimulus.  It just means that if the stimulus money was going to be spent anyway, he didn’t want his district to be left out.  But he didn’t want it to be passed in the first place.


3. That plant in Janesville, WI that Ryan mentioned was partially shut down in December 2008, before Obama took office, but it continued production on a much smaller scale until April 2009, when it was permanently and fully closed.  Obama made campaign promises about saving the plant, but it was shut down on his watch and never re-opened.  Obama made promises he couldn’t keep.  What Ryan said was accurate.


4. What Ryan said about Obama doing nothing with regard to the debt commissions is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.  Ryan voted no on the final findings of the debt commission – that is also true.  That was because the commission kept ObamaCare, and Ryan is opposed to ObamaCare.  However, Ryan did work with the commission on various ideas and he did propose an alternate budget that incorporated many elements of the Simpson-Bowles commission.  His alternate solution was actually praised by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the commission.  Obama, by contrast, completely ignored his own debt commission and proposed another completely unserious budget that did nothing about the debt at all.  It got zero votes in both the House and the Senate.  While Ryan disagreed with the debt commission’s conclusion, he worked hard to come up with alternate solutions even though he is only one out of 435 House members.  Obama is the president with more responsibility than anyone else, and yet did nothing to come up with any serious solutions.  Ryan’s attack was not only true, it was also completely fair.

This is why people need to stop letting the media do their thinking for them.  The press's latest tactic is to use the objective-sounding term "fact checking" to disguise their ideologically driven attacks against Republicans. 

I also watched most of the final night of the convention, which mostly featured a series of tributes from individuals who know Romney personally or who have worked with him professionally.  While I do not accept Mormonism as a legitimate form of Christianity, I couldn't help but be impressed by several individuals from Romney's church who movingly described the kindness, compassion, and love which Romney displayed in helping them through some incredibly tragic circumstances.  Those testimonies convinced me that Romney is not just a successful businessman, but also a deeply caring person who has spent his life helping others.  I was more familiar with Romney's experience founding and growing Bain Capital, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, and governing Massachusetts, but still found myself more impressed than I expected with the full weight of Romney's experiences and accomplishments throughout his life.  There is no doubt that Romney is a man who is eminently qualified to be president.

In between these tributes and Romney's acceptance speech were wedged two very different speakers: Clint Eastwood (!) and Senator Marco Rubio.  Eastwood's "speech" was actually more of an unscripted comedic routine which seemed a bit confused at times but got in some very effective shots at Obama.  Eastwood dared to do what no one else at the convention would or could: make fun of Obama (and Biden of course).  Despite a couple of crude allusions, I enjoyed the routine and would guess it played much better outside of the beltway than it did with professional pundits.  Rubio's speech was somewhat overshadowed by Eastwood but completely met my high expectations.  Among the most effective moments of his speech were his comment that "Obama was not a bad person, just a bad president" and his list of Obama's tax-and-spend, socialistic policies followed by the statement that "these are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from."  (This last was especially effective coming from the son of Cuban immigrants.)

There was nothing really wrong with Romney's acceptance speech, but I can't say that it excited me very much.  Many pundits seemed genuinely impressed with Romney's delivery and even stated that it was the best speech of his career.  I guess I have mostly heard Romney speak in debate forums rather than straight speeches, but I didn't find his delivery very impressive.  He seemed stiff and out-of-sync with the audience for at least the first half of the speech.  He seemed like he was rushing through the speech too much and failing to articulate his words clearly and pause appropriately, although he seemed to relax and did much better in the second half of his remarks.  Also, the speech was clearly designed to soften and humanize Romney, which may have appealed to independent and undecided voters but wasn't really what I was looking for.  The first half to two-thirds of the speech was pretty non-ideological, but he did finally get more into specifics about his beliefs and policies toward the end of the speech.  It was all from 30,000 feet, of course, but you generally don't get too specific in a convention speech anyway.  Anyway, I did think Romney drew some effective contrasts between himself and Obama, especially when he contrasted Obama's grandiose promises from 2008 about slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet with his simple, workman-like promises to "help you and your family" by getting the economy moving again.

Although Romney's speech wasn't overly exciting to a staunch partisan like myself, I expect it helped Romney quite a bit with those all-important independent and undecided voters.  (He's already convinced me to vote for him.)  I don't know how anyone who is not already a hardened partisan could watch the tributes to Romney from people who have known and worked with him and then the speech from Romney himself and conclude that he is anything other than a decent, compassionate, hard-working, trustworthy, and successful man.  Certainly it would be hard to conclude he was anything close to that monstrous caricature the Obama campaign has been pushing of a cold, ruthless businessman who destroyed businesses and individuals for the fun of it at Bain Capital while committing felonies and murdering people.  If the bar is whether this guy is a reasonable alternative to Obama, he more than crossed that hurdle.  If people are looking for someone who is likable and trustworthy, someone they can feel comfortable with on a personal level, I think Romney helped himself significantly with the last night of his convention. 

I plan to watch at least a little bit of the Democratic convention this week -- or at least as much of it as I can stomach.  I want to try to compare the themes and emphases of the two conventions, as well as the speakers themselves.  I already know what I think of the Democratic Party, but I'm interested to see whether they are going to provide any kind of positive case for Obama whatsoever and also how much of an effort they are going to make to appeal to the center.  I certainly have seen little of either a positive case or a centrist appeal from this president's campaign so far.

The R&R Ticket

Mitt Romney made one of the most important decisions of his campaign on Saturday.  He selected Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his Vice Presidential candidate.  Who is Paul Ryan, and is he a good pick?

I was very surprised by this pick.  I felt quite sure that Romney would make a "safe" choice -- one that would be fairly vanilla and non-controversial.  This is because I have felt from the beginning that Romney wanted to coast to victory as the default candidate and felt he could win simply by keeping the focus on Obama's awful economy.  Well, I was wrong.  Paul Ryan is a "big risk, big reward" type of choice.  By picking Ryan, Romney seems to be sending a message that he wants to run an ideas-driven campaign and make this election a stark choice between two visions for the country.

Several cons could be mentioned about Ryan -- he doesn't clearly deliver any state to Romney, he has never won a statewide election, and he like Romney is not overly charismatic.  But by far the biggest reason Ryan is a risky choice is because of the budget plans that Ryan has spearheaded in the House.  These budgets are the first serious attempt anyone in Washington has made to combat the runaway growth of entitlement spending and to reform programs like Medicare, and they make Ryan an easy target for demagoguery.  Democrats now have an opportunity to take the attention away from Obama's dismal record by running Mediscare ads 24/7 targeting seniors.  Democrats have had success with this strategy in the past -- most notably in 1995-1996.  Seniors are the most reliable voting bloc in the country and comprise an large percentage of voters in several key swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania.  If the Democrats are able to convince a significant number of them that Romney & Ryan want to take away their Medicare, then Obama has a clear path to victory despite his poor job approval numbers.  That is why so many Democrats expressed glee over Romney's choice and started attacking him even before he was officially announced.

The good news is that the truth is on the side of the GOP on this issue.  The facts are that the 2012 Ryan budget, which Romney has endorsed, does not take away anyone's Medicare.  No one age 55 or older will be affected at all by the Medicare reforms, and those under age 55 are guaranteed the same health coverage at no extra cost to them under this plan.  The plan's cost savings come not from making future Medicare recipients pay more out of pocket for their coverage, but rather from unleashing the power of free market competition into the Medicare system.  The only risk associated with Ryan's plan is the risk that it may not reform Medicare enough to completely avert a debt crisis.  There can be no debating that it is better than the status quo.  Yuval Levin has an outstanding article on National Review's website explaining exactly what Ryan's plan proposes with regard to Medicare and why it is such a good idea.  I highly recommend it.

The Democrats are simply lying about Ryan's plan.  They have no plan to save Medicare and control entitlement spending.  In fact, their beloved ObamaCare raids $700 billion from Medicare.  They have no solution themselves, so they are going all in to demagogue a very good solution by the Republican team.  The good news is that Romney and his supporting PAC's are flush with cash and should be able to at least match and probably exceed Obama's level of spending over the final two and a half months of the campaign.  Republicans have the ability to win this argument and absolutely must do so -- both to win the election and to save our country from a debt crisis.  Romney's instincts have always been to play it safe, but he has no choice now but to fight back hard and to win this important debate on the issues.

There are plenty of upsides to having Paul Ryan as the Vice Presidential candidate.  He is young and energetic, yet has plenty of experience in government.  He helps to unite the Republican base around Romney, since he is a strong fiscal and social conservative.  His working class background is a nice contrast to Romney, and he is well-liked on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.  Most importantly, Ryan is a brilliant and innovative thinker who understands the ins and outs of fiscal policy as well as anyone in Washington -- and can articulate his ideas very effectively.  Here is a video of Ryan debating Obama at the White House health care summit that shows his impressive grasp of the important issues facing the country.

Perhaps George Will put it best when he said that Romney "chose a running mate whose seriousness about large problems and ideas underscores what the president has become — silly and small."  Ryan is an intellectual heavyweight who will help Romney keep the focus of the campaign on the important issues of the economy, repealing ObamaCare, reforming entitlements, controlling spending, and reducing the deficit.  Ryan helps to underscore that Obama and the Democrats have no serious plan with regard to the deficit and entitlements.  Right now, Obama's team is overconfident.  Their non-stop attacks on Romney and Ryan will backfire if Romney and his supporters can effectively communicate their positive vision for the country.  If they play their cards right, the electorate will face a stark choice in November between a Republican ticket with real ideas to fix our economy and get our deficit under control and a Democratic ticket with a failed economic record and nothing to offer but blistering negativity.  If the American people don't have the sense to reject Obama under those circumstances, then we deserve what we get.

Tuesday Dinner With Paul Ryan!

So I don't have much information on this yet, but my wife and I just got a last-minute (free) invitation to a posh fundraising dinner in Washington, DC. The featured speakers? London Fletcher, Pro Bowl middle linebacker for the Washington Redskins, and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. As a diehard Redskins fan and a big supporter of Paul Ryan's Roadmap plan to address entitlements and the long-term national debt, I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity!

There are few politicians that I would be more excited to hear speak than Paul Ryan. To me, Congressman Ryan is the epitome of what an elected official should be - courageous yet thoughtful, principled without being overly partisan, a policy wonk who is more concerned about long-term solutions than short-term political gain. He has been one of only a handful of politicians willing to tackle head on one of the biggest challenges to our country (Social Security and Medicare reform) with his Roadmap for the Future plan, and has taken a lot of cheap shots from both Democrats and Republicans focused on political expediency. Not to say Ryan's Roadmap is necessarily perfect, but it's a great starting point for debate. It would be nice if Ryan's opponents would come to the table with their own specific plans and a willingness to honestly discuss our country's urgent spending and debt crisis. For decades our politicians have been "kicking the can down the road" when comes to dealing with these long-term problems, which might be good for their careers but is terrible for the future of our country. I look forward to hearing what Congressman Ryan has to say on Tuesday and sharing it with you!