Paul Ryan: We Owe The Country a Choice, Not an Echo

A follow-up to the earlier post. Ryan calls for "provocative" speech, informing the public of the true choices before them.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) tells National Review Online that Republicans, especially presidential contenders, need become more “provocative” when speaking about health-care reform. “We need to be provocative,” he says. “We owe the country a referendum election. We owe them a policy alternative.”

Specifically, Ryan urges the field to focus on Medicare. “It is the issue, pure and simple,” he says, noting that it encompasses the “debt issue, the deficit issue, and the economy issue.” To help them along this afternoon, Ryan, the Budget Committee chairman, outlined his health-care ideas at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, Calif.

...

“We can do a lot from the House to help bring the party, and therefore the presidential candidates, into the mode of offering a very clear and specific alternative to President Obama’s vision for the country,” he says. As Ryan told me in August, he wants to play a “Jack Kemp–like role” this cycle.

“He taught me that big ideas are the best politics,” Ryan said then.

“They will always be challenged, and they will sometimes be controversial, but you have to do what you think is right, what you’re passionate about, and be a strong advocate for it. If you do that, you can shift the debate in major ways. He showed me how you can do that.”

posted by Ace at 03:56 PM

| Access Comments