“We turned a national election into a school-board race”

So Ryan tried to Go Rogue, but was hamstrung?

Why does this sound familiar?

portlandon on November 7, 2012 at 1:06 PM

Oh, yeah, I thought the same.

I waded through the article to find this:

Those close to Ryan, whose idea of talking about rising poverty was rejected by the campaign, were also frustrated.

“If we had been speaking out about these issues before this happened, it would’ve inoculated us a little bit,” an adviser said.

Paul Ryan (and Sarah Palin) has better political instincts than the Boston machine that ran Romney’s campaign.

onlineanalyst on November 7, 2012 at 1:16 PM

True.

INC on November 7, 2012 at 1:20 PM

As part of his role, Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and giving speeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment.

I linked to this article many times this year:

When Mr. Romney was running for president four years ago, he said in an interview that the first thing he would do in the White House would be to bring in some business consultants. In other words, Washington is a management problem.

This is a profoundly mistaken Republican notion that goes back at least to Herbert Hoover . . . Republicans like Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and John McCain may have been more accomplished in the political realm but all struggled with what Bush 41 famously called the “vision thing.” Time and again, they’ve been defeated by Democrats proclaiming such things as the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and “hope and change.”

The Great Communicator Ronald Reagan, who spoke mostly in moral terms, was the magnificent exception. He understood that Washington is not a management problem; it is a political problem. Everything the government does is necessarily political, because governments decide not only who gets what, but why. These choices define a candidate’s politics, but they must be conceived and expressed in terms of moral priorities.

INC on November 7, 2012 at 1:26 PM

That article goes on to say:

Political language is inherently moral, not managerial. It must convey visions, not just plans. It must explain why some things are good and others bad.

Instincts are never enough. You need to have thought about politics in the philosophical sense to know what is going on. . . .

If you cannot articulate the cause for which you are fighting in moral terms, you will lose.

I think this is why we see this contradictory craziness of a majority of people saying government does too much, but then they re-elect Obama.

There were enough people who bought his lies and don’t get that the vision he lays out is contradictory to reality and to their own well-being. There will always be those who must be led by the hand and told how the dots connect. You must explain why some things are good and others bad. When you don’t, then you’re laid vulnerable to fighting on the stage of personal attacks.

The arena is in the realm of ideas. In that ring conservatives will win every time.

INC on November 7, 2012 at 1:33 PM

Please..let’s not blame Ryan for any of this. Seriously, let’s just not.

Illinidiva on November 7, 2012 at 1:32 PM

I don’t think anyone is blaming Ryan. He had the right idea. It appears that he was hamstrung.

INC on November 7, 2012 at 1:34 PM