Paul Ryan: The Real Deal

I attended the Paul Ryan campaign rally event at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio yesterday.  Both Ryan and BeeLine graduated from Miami.  It was a very large crowd considering that the students were not scheduled to move in until today.  The crowd was estimated at 6,000 in this report.  I was told that they originally planned the event with projected attendance of 1,500.  There was a line that I would estimate was about 1,000 yards long at its peak to get through the metal detectors.  As a result, Ryan took the stage about 45 minutes later than scheduled to allow for people to get into the event.

Here is a picture I took of Congressman Ryan as he spoke.  He was joined on the podium by this former Economics Professor, Richard Hart, (dark sport coat), U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) (red shirt) and Governor John Kasich (R-OH) who you can barely see behind Hart.

Ryan spoke for about 20 minutes and his remarks closely matched the reports I have seen from his other appearances.  He spoke with no teleprompter and I only saw him look at  notes 4 or 5 times.  He was very effective in his delivery.  In fact, I thought he did a much better job of connecting with the audience than either Kasich and Portman who have more experience in the political arena.

Politics is an art and it does require real skill and experience on the stump to really shine.  Like anything, the more you do it the better you become.  There was no better evidence of that than in comparing the State Rep and State Senator who warmed up the crowd before Kasich, Portman and Ryan took the stage.  It was the difference between going to a minor league and big league game.  Kasich, Portman and Ryan are all big leaguers.  Paul Ryan is also the real deal and seems destined to get even better as a result of this Vice Presidential campaign experience.

Democrats should be very concerned.  Who do the Democrats have of similar age that can make a case for something other than the status quo?  Nobody comes to mind?  I couldn't think of anyone either.

Kirsten Powers, a Gen-X'er like Ryan and a Clinton Democrat, is smart enough to see the danger that Ryan presents for Democrats in her article, "Why the Screwed Generation is Turning to Paul Ryan".  A few excerpts from the Powers article.

We’ve finally been vindicated: Members of Generation X have a representative who is anything but a slacker.

GOP Congressman Paul Ryan—the tireless, wonky, 42-year-old workout freak—has made history by becoming the first member of our generation to join a presidential ticket. It should come as a surprise to no one that his calling card is reforming entitlements.

Generation X chronicler Jeff Gordiner, has written that Gen-Xers suffer from “athazagoraphobia”—“an abnormal and persistent fear of being forgotten or ignored.” Except it’s not really a phobia; it’s been reality for a long time. Maybe that is about to change.

Enter Ryan. While Democrats attack his Medicare plan as “radical” and portray him as pushing granny off the cliff, young people don’t seem to be buying this caricature. Or maybe “radical” is what they want.

A Zogby/JZ Analytics poll Tuesday showed increased support among voters 18-29 for the Romney ticket, which pollster John Zogby attributed to the Ryan pick.  President Obama received just 49 percent of the youth vote, versus Romney’s 41 percent. (Obama took home 66 percent of the youth vote against McCain in 2008.)

For those who think those numbers are an anomaly, take a look at Pew’s 2011 polling that found that among 18-29 year olds, 46 percent supported Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes with only 28 percent opposing (the rest had no opinion). Among 30-49 year olds it was 38 percent approving and 36 percent opposed. The strongest opposition to Ryan’s plan comes from those over 65, who ironically won’t even be affected by his plan since it would only apply to those 55 and under. Pew found that age, not party identification was the biggest predictor of how a person would feel about his plan.

Still, the attacks by Democrats on Ryan and his plans for entitlement reform are scaring Boomers—who don’t want to lose the good deal they have and don’t realize Ryan’s plans wouldn’t impact anyone collecting Medicare now or who will start in the next 10 years—and could indeed cost Romney in November.

But Ryan is young and is poised to be the intellectual leader of the conservative movement for the next generation. He will be a force to be reckoned with. Name-calling and distortions of his plan by Democrats is not an effective long-term strategy, nor is it good for the country.

Paul Ryan: The Real Deal.  The Democrats: Still Trying to Relive the New Deal 80 Years Ago.