Ryan Streeter
I’ve been arguing (here and here) that the best profile for our 2012 GOP presidential nominee should be culled from our leading policy activists.
We need a nominee who is inspiring, has gravitas, and appeals to the middle. But, fundamentally, we need someone who is thoughtful and conversant on the complicated issues we face as a nation. This is the reason why we at ConservativeHome came out against Sarah Palin, who has not proved herself thoughtful on what matters most – which many people didn’t like judging by the mail.
If we could assemble several policy activists on our list into one candidate, here are a few I’d start with:
Devin Nunes on energy. Americans support investing in alternative energy. Nunes has put forward a bold plan, an “Energy Roadmap” to do for energy what Paul Ryan’s Roadmap would do for Social Security and Medicare. His plan includes a strategy for moving us to nuclear power in a way that costs nothing and, as the WSJ’s Kimberly Strassel has pointed out, does more to reduce carbon emissions than anything Democrats have proposed. He's the most creative thinker among Republicans right now on energy issues. The GOP has admittedly not done well on constructive alternatives to the Democrats' tax-and-cap theory of energy innovation, which just doesn't work. Nunes offers a clear plan that achieves more than the Democrats offer at a far lower cost.
Mitch Daniels on fiscal responsibility. Daniels was cutting spending in Indiana when times were good, something politicians never do. Some might think this is because Daniels is, as Herb London has said, “viscerally parsimonious.” This is a part of it, but more to the point, Daniels has demonstrated that there’s just a lot of government that we don’t really need – and we can get rid of much more of it than we might think. He cut public staff levels in Indiana to where they were in 1978, Indiana was the only state to pay its debt down. A big part of Indiana’s joining the club of AAA rated states (which includes only 11 states) was the fiscal discipline that Indiana exercised during better times.
Tom Coburn on tax reform. He voted for the deficit commission’s recommendations. He has emerged as a guy who will go so far as to compromise – imagine! – with Democrats to make progress on deficit reduction. A big part of this is reforming the tax code, as the commission detailed. As Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute has said, a Reagan-esque approach to reform would include big-time reform of all the credits and deductions in the tax code, which cost $1 trillion annually. We could do some serious debt pay-down with these savings.
Bob Corker on spending limits. Every couple years or so, someone comes along with the idea of pegging government spending to GDP and gets laughed out of town. But Bob Corker has managed to propose the idea in a bill with Claire McCaskill as a co-sponsor. He has proposed to bring honesty and transparency to how we spend U.S. taxpayers’ money. It would keep federal spending under 21% of GDP and make us count our entitlement programs in the overall total (which would force us to deal with entitlement reform).
Paul Ryan on slaying the deficit beast. It kind of gets tiring praising Paul Ryan because it feels terribly unoriginal. But the truth is he has put forward a compelling plan of his own, developed one in partnership with Alice Rivlin, and is the only voice in the GOP (or anywhere, for that matter) who has dared to touch the third rail of politics in America and not get struck by lightening. By reforming Social Security and Medicare, his plan would make solvent the programs that will undo America’s future as they currently stand.
Imagine what we could do if we could roll this combined talent together into a single candidate.
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