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August 11, 2012

Analysis: Ryan pick sets clear November choice

Now it's the Romney-Ryan budget, which President Obama calls 'social Darwinism.'

By DONNA CASSATA/The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney's pick of Rep. Paul Ryan for the Republican presidential ticket brings clarity to the stark election-year choice for voters -- the competing Democratic and GOP visions about the size and role of the federal government in Americans' lives.

Ryan is synonymous with his revolutionary budget that slashes spending for safety-net programs for the poor, remakes Medicare and cuts personal and corporate taxes while pushing the deficit down to a manageable level. It turns the tea party dream of a scaled-back, less involved government into hard-core reality.

"America is more than just a place ... it's an idea. It's the only country founded on an idea," Ryan said Saturday in Virginia as Romney introduced his vice presidential choice. "Our rights come from nature and God, not government. We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."

With Romney's embrace of Ryan, it is now the Romney-Ryan budget and blueprint for the future.

President Obama, who repeatedly talks up the November election as a profound choice for the country, has rejected the Ryan approach as "thinly veiled social Darwinism." The Democrat and former community organizer sees government as a place with enough resources to help the less fortunate.

The Ryan budget, Obama said in April, "is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who's willing to work for it; a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top but grows outward from the heart of the middle class."

Roughly three months before the election, Romney's choice clearly defines the fault lines and establishes the narrative for the election, one that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and tea partyers will echo in congressional and gubernatorial races. The outcome in November will have far-reaching implications for looming fiscal crises in the year's final days.

On the grass-roots level, the selection of the 42-year-old Ryan, one of the House's intellectual conservatives and Budget Committee chairman, energizes a GOP base wary of the Massachusetts governor and architect of the state's health insurance program dubbed "Romneycare."

Conservatives, from The Wall Street Journal editorial page to the rank and file, had been clamoring in recent days for Ryan. The timing of the announcement came as polls showed Obama with a narrow advantage and the number of undecided voters diminishing, underscoring the need for Romney to act fast.

"It's absolutely fantastic," Sal Russo, a longtime Republican operative and founder of the Tea Party Express, a well-funded wing of the populist movement, said in an interview. "He's willing to go out there and tackle tough issues. The American people want somebody to make the tough choices."

Russo said his organization had polled its 17,000 members, and Ryan and freshman Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida were the favorites for the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket.

The conservative reward of Ryan also carries a significant political risk -- and Democrats wasted no time in making it a top talking point.

The Ryan budget would scrap the current Medicare system that the nation's seniors have enjoyed for decades in favor of a voucher program for those under 55 today. Starting in 10 years, the plan also calls for gradually raising the Medicare retirement age from 65 to 67.

Democrats immediately sounded the alarm about the implications of changing the popular entitlement program, a warning certain to resonate in battleground states such as Florida, Iowa and Pennsylvania -- states with the heaviest concentration of those 65 and over.

"In selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has crystalized the contrast of this election," said Rod Smith, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "Ryan is the architect of Romney's extreme budget plan which would end Medicare as we know it, increasing the healthcare costs for Florida's seniors by thousands every year."

(Continued on page 2)

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