Ask the Chicago Gang and its publicists in the mainstream media. They’re terrified.
They know that when Mitt Romney chose Ryan for his vice president, it re-defined the Romney campaign overnight.
It proved Mitt was not as boring, cautious and moderate as conservative Republicans feared and the Obama Left hoped.
In one bold, smart move, Romney’s VP choice makes it clear that this election is about one thing — the economy.
And there is no better person on the planet to discuss that issue than Ryan, the young, articulate, spirited, openly Reaganesque conservative who heads up the House Budget Committee and is the leading Republican deficit hawk in Congress.
With Ryan as his VP choice, Romney also took a huge step in redefining what the Republican Party is and reminding everyone what it’s supposed to stand for.
For decades Reagan conservatives have been wondering what has happened to the GOP my father loved. He worked hard to shape it into a party that clearly and proudly stood for smaller government, more freedom, free enterprise and a strong military.
But for two decades Republican politicians have been trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. The GOP my father left behind lost its way, lost its nerve and chose to betray many of its core principles to win elections.
By choosing Ryan, Romney has ended the era of Republicrat fuzziness overnight. It makes me think Mitt and his advisers have decided that the way to defeat Obama was to heed the advice my father gave to the GOP in 1975 at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Republicans, disheartened by the post-Watergate thrashing they got at the polls in 1974, were being urged by moderates to water down (i.e., liberal-up) their party’s principles to broaden its appeal to voters.
My father told them not to further “blur” the distinctions between the two parties but to “revitalize” the GOP by reasserting its conservative principles and raising them “to full view.”
He challenged Republicans to raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear” that their party believed in “a free market as the greatest provider for the people,” not socialism.
The conservative conventioneers took my father’s wise message to heart, but the nation’s voters didn’t. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and the country got four years of economic malaise and folly in the Middle East that did not end until my father was elected in 1980 — as an unabashed conservative.
America today is truly at a crossroads. This election is going to decide the direction we take for the next 50 years. For the first time in a while, the American people will have a clear choice.
Do you want the USA to go down the Obama Expressway to Greece or, God forbid, California? Or do you want to go down the Romney-Ryan-Reagan Freeway to freedom, growth and prosperity for all people?
It’s up to the American people to decide where they want to go. It’s up to Romney and Ryan — R & R, two letters that look pretty good together, I’d say — to sell their message of conservatism.
Americans can’t afford to wait for someone to come along four years from now and fix the damage Obama has already done.
Copyright ©2012 Michael Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Cari Dawson Bartley at [email protected] or call 800-696-7561.
Mr.Michael Reagan,
I agree with you completely.I really believe that this election is as important to our country as Abraham Lincoln’s was to that time in our history.I feel, and it scares me to death, that four more years of President Obama,it tears me apart to even call him president,will lead our country into the swamp of Liberalism and Socialism that we will not if ever see our way back again.Obama’s vision for our country is so totally foreign to what we know.He intends to weaken and destroy our country.Economically and defensively.Looking at the Democratic National Convention and the faces on the people in their audience is truly terrifying.They appear to be in a trance.I wonder if that crowd is reflective of the whole Party or a small group of fanatics.I am afraid to think they may be representative of the Democratic Party as a whole.Watching them purposely removing God,the foundation upon which our nation was founded, and has lived by for hundreds of years, and then seeing how many violently opposed returning it to the platform when Obama was forced to do so.What kind of fanatics are getting into the Democratic party? Watching them attempting to flush Israel down the toilet while pretending to be more supportive of the State of Israel than the last so many administrations.We must continue to support Israel just as we have since 1948.
Well,I could go on for ever when I get on the subject of the survival our America.I love your Dad and I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinions.I always tune in whenever I know your going to be a guest on someone’s show.I remember how totally down we all were by the end of President Carter’s term.I remember one of the things Ronald Reagan promised all of us.He said that he would make us proud to be Americans again.Your Dad kept that promise and the rest of the ones he made all of us.We want to know that feeling again.We want to be able to stand tall and say again,”We are again proud to be Americans”.
Thank you.