Liberal attack dogs are going into overdrive trying to distort Congressman Paul Ryan’s record. They want to paint him as a wild-eyed fanatic and make Ryan terrifying to swing voters, just like they did to Governor Sarah Palin.
“Not this time,” promises former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, chairman of a new SuperPAC, appropriately named Defend Paul Ryan. Blackwell and other champions of fiscal discipline and entitlement reform have launched a campaign to get out the truth about Paul Ryan and aggressively refute any smear-attacks from President Obama’s supporters.
This conservative truth squad will likely focus on two central truths about Paul Ryan.
The first is that Ryan is a next-generation leader of supply-side economics, firmly understanding that liberating free-market forces and increasing the amount of money in the economy that private individuals and organizations can invest and direct maximizes growth and prosperity. He is the next generation of the fiscal philosophy of Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, and Steve Forbes–all of whom Ken Blackwell worked with, explaining why he’s chairing the effort to highlight Ryan’s credentials in this arena.
The second is that Ryan is a constitutional conservative–who understands that the three legs of the Reagan coalition–economic, social, and national security conservatives, are interdependent, not rivals. Social issues are economic issues, as the data is overwhelming that intact families are engines of economic growth, prudent investment, and wealth creation, while fractured families too often result to government dependency and economic waste. Children raised in supportive households with a father and mother are more likely to graduate high school and college, and have a productive career and successful marriage. Ryan understands this reality, having worked hard to help his own family after his father died when Ryan was sixteen years old.
“Paul Ryan is a great fusion candidate for the three legs of the Reagan coalition,” Blackwell explains. (Full disclosure: I have coauthored two books with Ken Blackwell.) “You can’t balance the budget or reform entitlements if you have too many families dependent on government support. And you can’t have the best military and security apparatus in the world unless you have a vibrant economy to fully fund current needs while also investing in future needs. He gets it, and he’s able to explain it to the average citizen with clarity and eloquence.”
Blackwell, who serves with both the economic-conservative Club for Growth and the social-conservative Family Research Council, continues, “This is the heart of American exceptionalism. It’s what this president doesn’t get. This nation is facing a long-term fiscal tsunami that will devastate America’s families unless we reapply these founding principles that have made us the strongest, richest, greatest nation on earth. With Paul Ryan, the campaign can make that case to the American people.”
Defend Paul Ryan understands that entrenched interests will pull out all the stops, because they’ll be trying to kill the message even more than the messenger. The SuperPAC’s plan is to harness the energy and resources of everyone who for years have identified with fiscal-conservative giants like Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes to lay the facts before the American people.
So it’s on. Governor Mitt Romney made a very bold choice by going with Paul Ryan, and now those who understand the legacy that Ryan represents are fiercely determined to make sure the American people understand what this VP nominee is all about.
Breitbart News legal contributor Ken Klukowski graduated from the University of Notre Dame and is on faculty at Liberty University.