Mitt Romney is enjoying an initial burst of energy after adding Rep.
Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket. He is drawing the biggest and
most enthusiastic crowds of his campaign, the same way that GOP nominee John
McCain did four years ago after naming Sarah Palin as his running mate. Romney
is getting what he hoped for when he passed over safer choices.
But he also has bought trouble, as is clear from
Democrats’ attacks on Ryan’s far-reaching and controversial budget plan, which
would — among other things — transform Medicare into a premium support program
for younger people upon retirement.
Whether or not Romney wanted a debate about
Medicare, an issue that long has favored Democrats, he has one. His campaign
advisers recognize the dangers. From their perspective, it’s better to have the
discussion now than in October. They are trying to take this fight to the
president in a way that no Republican nominee has done before.
On Tuesday, the Romney campaign began its
counterattack on the Medicare issue even before President Obama’s campaign
could air its first ad on the issue. Romney’s ad charges that Obama cut more
than $700 billion from Medicare to help finance his controversial health-care
overhaul.
“We’re the ones who are offering a plan to save Medicare, to protect
Medicare, to strengthen Medicare,” Ryan (Wis.) told Brit Hume of Fox News
Channel. “President Obama is actually damaging Medicare for current seniors.
It’s irrefutable. And that’s why I think this is a debate we want to have, and
that’s a debate we’re going to win.”
Romney is dealing with two problems: the details
of Ryan’s budget blueprint, and questions about the differences between the running
mates’ fiscal and Medicare plans.
Romney and his advisers insist that he will be
running on his plan, not Ryan’s. In part, they’ve done that to remind people
that the tail will not wag the dog, that the running mate will not overshadow
the nominee. All presidential candidates would say the same thing.
But keeping Ryan’s plan out of the debate is
virtually impossible. Romney embraced the conceptual framework of the
congressman’s blueprint long before he selected Ryan as his running mate. At
the time, he could preserve some space to say he wouldn’t follow every detail
of Ryan’s outline.
That was before he put on the ticket a politician
described as the intellectual leader of the GOP who has been in the thick of
the battle over how to transform government through tax cuts, budget reductions
and entitlement reform. Pick Ryan and you get the blueprint as your own.
On the big issues, Romney and Ryan are in
agreement. They favor big tax cuts in which the wealthiest Americans would
benefit significantly. They have not fully explained how they would offset that
lost revenue. They support reductions in domestic discretionary spending. Both
want changes that would convert Medicare into a premium support program for
younger workers. Their priorities are the same.
Romney hasn’t said whether he has real differences
with Ryan or mostly minor ones — on Medicare or anything else in the budget
proposal. The last thing he wants is a Romney-Ryan debate, but if there are
substantive differences, they ought to be highlighted and explained. One real
difference is that Ryan accepts the cuts Obama made to Medicare as part of his
budget. Romney would restore them but hasn’t explained why he objects to what
Ryan would do.
Romney hoped that the choice of Ryan would amplify
his message that the status quo or even small changes aren’t going to solve the
country’s fiscal problems. That is a big argument and a debate worth having.
Right now, however, Romney is dealing with questions about whether Ryan’s plan
would hurt seniors, the middle class or the poor.
Democrats are seizing the moment. Obama is
traveling across Iowa this week trying to tie Romney via Ryan to congressional
Republicans, whose favorability rating is in the basement. Vice President Biden
is attacking Ryan, almost as if he were the nominee.
Obama campaign advisers are brushing aside any
idea that there is daylight between Romney and Ryan and focusing on Ryan’s
budget for what is likely to be a campaign of negative ads. The Democrats are
using August as they used July, to try to define the opposition before Romney —
and now Ryan — fully defend and define themselves.
Romney’s campaign advisers believe they have
opportunities to win this debate. Obama’s economic record remains the biggest
threat to his reelection bid. He is vulnerable as well to the criticism that he
is not offering real leadership on entitlement reform. The new Medicare ad
seeks to exploit what the president did to Medicare to finance his health-care
program and put Democrats on the defensive.
Ironically, Democrats cried foul over the new ad,
saying Obama was cutting the rate of growth in the program, not reducing actual
spending. That ignores the fact that, in the 1996 campaign, Democrats attacked
Republicans for cutting Medicare spending when Republicans were reducing the
rate of growth in the program.
Romney’s convention gives him a chance to tie
everything together: the candidate’s biography presented in its most positive
way; the policy differences with Obama outlined with clarity; the economic and
fiscal arguments advanced with sharpness and elevation; and the Obama attacks
rebutted cleanly. The campaign may look and feel different at that point.
But Romney and Ryan face the possibility that,
before the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Obama and the Democrats
will define Ryan’s budget — and in particular his changes to Medicare — so
negatively that the damage will be long-lasting. That’s why Romney’s campaign
has moved quickly to blunt the Medicare attacks. But this fight is just
starting, which is what makes these weeks a defining moment in the campaign.
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