Good Choosing

My Mitt's VP app on my iPhone waited patiently to relay the news of his vice presidential choice. When I awoke on Saturday morning my wife said that the newspapers had it 9 hours before my app went off. Oh well. The important point, though, was that it was Paul Ryan and not just another gray suit and it signalled that we really were going to have a campaign down the stretch that deals with ideas and not vapid slogans. 

Late this week Charles Krauthammer called for Romney to take the gloves off and run a campaign that clearly exposes Democratic ideology for what it is (Socialist) and compares it with how Republicans see the world. His column ends with this summary:

"Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.

It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.

In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s you-didn’t-build-that needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.

Four years of that and this is what you get. Make the case and you win the White House."
www.tennessean.com/article/20120812/COLUMNIST0150/308120016/Charles-Krauthammer-Romney-should-disprove-Obama-s-ideologies

Krauthammer is right and Paul Ryan is just the guy to make this argument.

It isn't well known, but President Obama will not debate Ryan one-on-one because he has tried twice and lost. Ryan knows the budget inside and out and can explain in simple terms what will happen if we continue our current policies and the ruinous spending that goes with them. 

Those who know him also know that he is more interested in policies and what really is best for America than playing politics. He and Oregon's Ron Wyden, for example, co-sponsored an overhaul of Medicare that really might work to scale down costs and that offered both public and private choices to participants. It is that type of person that this country needs for such a time as this because we are in serious, serious trouble. 

My personal choice for VP was Marco Rubio. I think he would have sent a message that the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln even today. His time will come, though, and I am sure that he will be out supporting the Romney/Ryan ticket as one of its main surrogates. That Obama is even in this race at all shows the power of demagoguery and confusion. With Paul Ryan on board, this is going to rapidly end. Let the games begin.