Ryan Streeter
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OK, the 2012 field is set. Christie and Palin are not running, and all of the other promising candidates who should be running have already said they aren't. There is no one left to get in.
So it's time to start asking the candidates directly, without reference to potential entrants into the race, what each of them will do to fix the nation's biggest problems - because fixing big problems is what this election is about.
Campaigns are about winning elections, and so most of the coverage over the next year will focus on whether and how the GOP candidates and eventual nominee can beat Obama.
But elections are also about ideas and how to fix the nation. On this front, the current GOP field is failing miserably in three areas which – if they play things right – could help them gain an upper hand on Obama and provide leadership the electorate needs. The reason they don’t talk about these three areas very much is because of political timidity. It’s time for them to get over their caution and use what they think is politically risky to their advantage against a highly vulnerable President.
The three areas are spending, health care, and upward mobility.
Here’s my advice to the candidates:
Get real on spending cuts. In a strange paradox, GOP candidates in 2012 are at once trying like crazy to curry favor with the Tea Party while also trying like crazy to avoid specifics on how they would cut spending (the raison d’etre of the Tea Party). Kevin Williamson made this point last week while criticizing Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 proposal. Tax cuts alone will not generate the revenue needed to close the deficit. If we cut taxes, we need to cut spending. Level with people and explain how lower taxes means not only more disposable income but also a less oppressive government. Barack Obama is for people keeping less of their disposable income (so he can sponsor ill-fated ventures like insolvent solar panel companies) and a more oppressive government.
Stop being timid on health care reform. The cost of hiring people is hurting new businesses, which is hurting job growth – since new businesses create most new jobs. This cost is driven not only by the regulatory burden Republicans like to talk about, but also because of health care costs and the uncertain certainty that they’ll increase: "certainty" because everyone knows for sure that they’ll go up under ObamaCare, but "uncertainty" because no one knows exactly how much. Those two factors are a huge reason why people don’t hire. Paul Ryan gave a great speech on health care reform at Hoover last week. Read Ramesh Ponnuru’s overview of it, and adopt the Ryan rationale with Ponnuru’s modification: start telling the American public that you’re going to introduce a credit for anyone – not just those who get health insurance at work – to purchase their own insurance, but that you’ll let people keep their insurance at work if they want. The themes of choice and lower cost will appeal to people. Go at ObamaCare full-on not just by saying you’ll repeal it, or issue waivers the first day (Romney’s idea), but by giving a hopeful alternative. Business owners and families need to know there is hope for health care reform. Right now, the cost-of-health-care landscape looks bleak.
Talk about upward mobility for average people. No one in the current field knows how to do this. Only Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan have dared to do so. The current candidates cede the middle class to a Left that doesn’t understand the middle class. Conservatives lightly dismiss the Occupy Wall Street protests, which could come back to bite. The silly thing is that the protestors don’t know what their mission is, and their 99% meme is completely wrong-headed. As Josh Barro points out, the bottom 99% of Americans includes people earning $500,000 and more, and even worse, Obama’s real hopes for tax policy would end up soaking not the rich but the very middle class he upholds. Every candidate should have quantifiable claims about how his or her economic plan will help families at median income. Will the 9-9-9 plan help them? Will Huntsman’s plan? Will Romney’s 59 point plan hold some hope for the middle? If they can’t articulate how average families will benefit in very clear ways, they should suspend talking about those plans until they can. And they shouldn't criticize the protestors until they can explain convincingly how wrongheaded the placard-waving crowd is on the facts, and what a better alternative for mainstream America is. The goal is not just GDP growth, but growth in opportunity and income for middle America.
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