Roughly 800 people came to Altoona on Saturday night to celebrate Governor Terry Branstad’s birthday and raise money for his re-election campaign. The featured speaker was House Budget Committee Chair and 2012 Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Listening to his remarks at Radio Iowa’s website, I didn’t hear a serious contender for the presidency in 2016.
Three big things were missing from Ryan’s speech.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE LINES
How hard can it be to get a sympathetic crowd going at an event like Branstad’s birthday party? Ryan took shots at a bunch of easy targets like Bruce Braley and Obamacare, but he drew very little applause. His jokes mostly fell flat. He ended with a weak rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song, rather than with anything memorable or inspiring.
TACTICS FOR MOVING THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA
This guy chairs the U.S. House Budget Committee. I expected to hear some road map for how Republicans can win the ongoing battle over funding the federal government.
Ryan kept a low profile during the government shutdown, which was the biggest political event of the past two months. Maybe it slipped past me, but I didn’t hear him mention the shutdown in his speech to the Iowa crowd. He should have told the audience how, in his view, Republicans can get the Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democratic president to agree to funding the government at the lower “sequester” level. How far should House Republicans go to block any further increases of the debt ceiling? If not through more brinksmanship and government shutdowns, then what?
A LONG-TERM STRATEGY
I doubt many Republicans blame the vice presidential nominee for Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama. Nevertheless, as a member of that ticket, Ryan should demonstrate that he knows a better way forward. At the Branstad event, Ryan put an optimistic spin on the disappointing results from the 2012 elections. He and Romney had to run against “big government in theory” (promises about policies enacted during Obama’s first term). Republicans will do better in future elections now that they’re able to run against “big government in practice” (failed policies like Obamacare and the 50-year-old “war on poverty”).
Maybe yes, maybe no. I wouldn’t be surprised if the GOP has a decent midterm election, but long-term the demographic trends are against them. What’s Ryan going to do about that? All I heard were platitudes about offering voters “real” solutions and “equal opportunity.”
Branstad referred to Ryan as an “ideas person.” That reputation is a bit of a joke. Ryan’s budget wouldn’t even balance during a ten-year horizon. His spending projections massively understate defense expenditures, and his tax reform numbers don’t add up either. I guess compared to Branstad, almost any politician is an ideas person, but I didn’t hear any new ideas in the speech. Ryan didn’t defend his proposal for changing Medicare or his plan for simplifying the tax system.
Sitting members of Congress have an uphill battle in presidential campaigns to begin with; so many votes to defend, so easily tied to “Washington” (synonymous with failure), so few accomplishments compared to what a governor can brag about. If Ryan wants to be president some day, he’ll need to offer Republican audiences something special to overcome those obstacles. Senator Ted Cruz is selling powerful fantasies these days.
Please share any relevant thoughts in this thread.
P.S. – My early pick for winner of the 2016 Iowa caucuses (and possibly the GOP presidential nomination), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, says he loves Paul Ryan, but:
“I think it’s got to be an outsider,” Walker said about the potential Republican presidential nominee in 2016 on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think both the presidential and the vice presidential nominee should either be a former or current governor, people who have done successful things in their states, who have taken on big reforms, who are ready to move America forward.”
UPDATE: Writing for the Washington Post, Lori Montgomery discussed Ryan’s focus on fighting poverty. Excerpt:
Advisers say Ryan’s immediate goal is to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee when Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) steps down in 2015. That would give him an ideal perch to advance an expanded agenda that combines an overhaul of the tax code and federal health and retirement programs with kinder, gentler policies to encourage work and upward mobility.
But Ryan has not ruled out a run for president, according to his closest advisers. […]
Ryan’s new emphasis on social ills doesn’t imply that he’s willing to compromise with Democrats on spending more government money. His idea of a war on poverty so far relies heavily on promoting volunteerism and encouraging work through existing federal programs, including the tax code. That’s a skewed version of Kempism, which recognizes that “millions of Americans look to government as a lifeline,” said Bruce Bartlett, a historian who worked for Kemp and has become an acerbic critic of the modern GOP.
“They want to care,” Bartlett said of Ryan and modern Republicans. “But they’re so imprisoned by their ideology that they can’t offer anything meaningful.” Ryan has explained the difference by noting that the national debt has grown enormously since Kemp ran for president in 1988, nearly doubling as a percentage of the economy.
GOP targets perceptions
Ryan’s interest in poverty dovetails with a larger effort to revamp the GOP, which has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus commissioned an autopsy of the 2012 campaign that identified “the perception that the GOP does not care about people” as “a major deficiency,” and recommended a renewed effort to “be the champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder.”
Since then, the search has been on for a conservative response to rising income inequality and the record 15 percent of Americans who live in poverty.
Igor Volsky points out the glaring flaw in Ryan’s branding effort:
The GOP budget would repeal the Affordable Care Act – a law that provides health care security for millions of working poor Americans by expanding Medicaid for individuals and families earning above 133 percent of the federal poverty line – and send the program back to the states. States would receive a federal block grant of funding that would not keep up with current cost projections, forcing governors and legislatures to either make up the difference or cut eligibility and benefits. As the Congressional Budget Office predicted, “reducing federal payments for Medicaid relative to currently projected amounts would probably require states to provide less extensive coverage, or to pay a larger share of the program’s total costs, than would be the case under current law.” A study from the Urban Institute found that Ryan’s plan would reduce Medicaid enrollment by a whopping 50 percent.
Food stamps – which kept 4 million people out of poverty in 2012 – don’t fare any better. The GOP budget similarly block grants the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, costing it $125 billion in funding over the next decade. It also cuts an additional $10 billion after the transition is complete and ultimately pushes more than 12 million Americans out of the program.
Overall, the House Republican budget’s vast spending reductions are overwhelmingly aimed at low-income Americans, so much so that nearly two-thirds of its cuts would come from poverty programs that aid the neediest people in the nation. That would mean steep reductions for child care, Head Start, job training, Pell Grants, housing, energy assistance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), or welfare. And that doesn’t even consider Ryan’s preferred tax structure, which would redistribute wealth to the richest Americans while potentially increasing taxes for everyone else.