Synthaholic
Diamond Member
I'm loving it!
Paul Ryan to Tea Party: You are the problem
.
Today, Paul Ryan gave a fascinating speech at Heritage Action, a tea party-allied organization that has fashioned itself as the guardian of conservative purity. The speech called for unity. “To quote William Wallace in Braveheart,” he said, “we have to unite the clans.”
But his speech was actually a repudiation of everything the tea party has done. Not only that, Ryan also took shots at the congressional Republican leadership, and even the current GOP presidential candidates. He didn’t call anyone out by name, but if you understand what’s happening now and the conflict that has roiled the Republican Party for the last seven years, the critique was hard to miss.
Not surprisingly, for much of the speech he blamed conservatives’ own sins on progressives, Democrats, and Barack Obama. That has become a familiar refrain — It’s their fault that we’ve become such monsters! — but when you say that, you’re still acknowledging that the sins exist. Let’s start here:
*snip*
It’s hard to tell where Ryan draws the line between real issues and distractions, but every time you define an issue as the latter, you’re telling some major Republican constituency to shut its mouth.
This is perhaps the most critical part of Ryan’s speech:
Paul Ryan to Tea Party: You are the problem
.
Today, Paul Ryan gave a fascinating speech at Heritage Action, a tea party-allied organization that has fashioned itself as the guardian of conservative purity. The speech called for unity. “To quote William Wallace in Braveheart,” he said, “we have to unite the clans.”
But his speech was actually a repudiation of everything the tea party has done. Not only that, Ryan also took shots at the congressional Republican leadership, and even the current GOP presidential candidates. He didn’t call anyone out by name, but if you understand what’s happening now and the conflict that has roiled the Republican Party for the last seven years, the critique was hard to miss.
Not surprisingly, for much of the speech he blamed conservatives’ own sins on progressives, Democrats, and Barack Obama. That has become a familiar refrain — It’s their fault that we’ve become such monsters! — but when you say that, you’re still acknowledging that the sins exist. Let’s start here:
“My theory of the case is this: We win when we have an ideas contest. We lose when we have a personality contest. We can’t fall into the progressives’ trap of acting like angry reactionaries. The Left would love nothing more than for a fragmented conservative movement to stand in a circular firing squad, so the progressives can win by default.
*snip*
It’s hard to tell where Ryan draws the line between real issues and distractions, but every time you define an issue as the latter, you’re telling some major Republican constituency to shut its mouth.
This is perhaps the most critical part of Ryan’s speech:
“And so what I want to say to you today is this: Don’t take the bait. Don’t fight over tactics. And don’t impugn people’s motives. It’s fine if you disagree. And there’s a lot that’s rotten in Washington. There’s no doubt about that. But we can’t let how you vote on an amendment to an appropriations bill define what it means to be a conservative. Because, it’s setting our sights too low. Frankly, that’s letting the president define us. That’s what he wants us to do. That’s defining ourselves as an opposition party, instead of a proposition party.
“So we have to be straight with each other, and more importantly, we have to be straight with the American people. We can’t promise that we can repeal Obamacare when a guy with the last name Obama is president. All that does is set us up for failure . . . and disappointment . . . and recriminations.
“So we have to be straight with each other, and more importantly, we have to be straight with the American people. We can’t promise that we can repeal Obamacare when a guy with the last name Obama is president. All that does is set us up for failure . . . and disappointment . . . and recriminations.
“When voices in the conservative movement demand things that they know we can’t achieve with a Democrat in the White House, all that does is depress our base and in turn help Democrats stay in the White House. We can’t do that anymore.”