Paul Ryan is a solid if not sensational choice for the Vice Presidency – a reverse Sarah Palin, if you will. I know, I know, he is meant to be a gamble, but all Veep nominations are gambles. Ryan may not be deemed a ‘safe pick’ in the Tim Pawlenty mould, but a safe pick would actually have been risky for Romney, whose campaign is in dire need of conservative pep.
Ryan is, as everybody keeps pointing out, a fiscal hawk. And he’s not just grandstanding against deficits. He means it. He was interested in reforming – and bringing down the cost of – American healthcare before the row over Obamacare. His ‘Roadmap for America’s Future’, a plan to save American prosperity is, conservatives widely agree, the most intelligent attempt to define the GOP’s economic agenda.
Ryan believes in saving elements of American welfare, but only by making the system leaner and more sustainable. This has appeal among the Republican rank-and-file. There’s a good story about how, when that great old phony Newt Gingrich dismissed Ryan’s fiscal plans as ‘right-wing social engineering’, a GOP member shot back at him, ‘you’re an embarrassment to our party.’
And yes, Ryan’s Catholicism should help Romney’s cause in Appalachia and the rust belt, and negate some of the suspicion with which the middle- and lower-middle-classes regard Mitt’s Mormonism.
The thing that troubles grassroots conservatives, though, is this: if Ryan is so committed to reducing the size and scale of American spending, why he is so committed to massively expensive wars?
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