Ryan: Republicans will be ready

By Ed Nadolski

Editor in Chief

Republicans are more determined than ever to fix the mistakes that led to the party’s loss in the 2012 presidential election, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan told an audience of Rotarians and their guests last week in Burlington.

In response to a question about the campaign in which Ryan, of Janseville, was Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, Ryan admitted the party was too confident based on polling in the weeks before the vote.

“Almost a quarter of the people (who turned out) never voted in a presidential election before,” Ryan said.

And the vast majority of those people voted to send Barack Obama to his second term.

Republicans – and traditional pollsters – didn’t anticipate that grassroots groundswell in favor of the president.

Ryan chalked up the problems to his party’s depleted war chest and lack of a better-organized strategy on the street level.

Now, he said, the goal is to “make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

It’s a challenge that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus – another Wisconsin product – is working on 24/7, according to Ryan.

“The RNC is going through an entire makeover,” he said. “Now (Priebus) has the time to focus” unlike the frantic run-up to the 2012 vote.

That strategy, Ryan said, will include heavy use of social media – something the Democrats excelled at in 2012.

He said the RNC has hired a chief engineer from Facebook and is putting grassroots organizers in communities throughout the country.

Other initiatives include changes to the primary process, moving the convention further from the election (late June or early July), and hand-picking the moderators for the Republican primary debates.

The goal of those changes, he said, is to ensure the Republican nominee comes through the primary process in better shape in terms of finances and public relations.

“We’ve got to get one or two generations ahead,” Ryan said of the quest for younger voters.

As chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Ryan has remained in the spotlight since the 2012 election and is considered by some a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, along with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

However, at this point, neither the congressman nor the governor have discussed their intentions publicly.

Other topics

Ryan spoke for about 10 minutes to the Republican-friendly crowd at Veterans Terrace and then answered a series of questions posed by audience members for nearly 30 minutes more before leaving to award a Bronze Star to a 93-year-old World War II veteran in Janesville.

Among the other topics he touched on:

Congressional probe into IRS treatment of Tea Party groups: Ryan called the alleged actions of the IRS “absolute arrogance and condescension of the federal government.” He said he believes four laws have been broken by the agency and the matter will be turned over to the Justice Department for investigation. “This should have nothing to do with Republican or Democrat, red or blue,” Ryan said. “Liberals should be just as concerned about a government that targets them for their views.”

Iraq: Ryan said the lack of involvement by the U.S. has allowed ISIS to grow into “a most lethal version of a terrorist organization” rivaling the Taliban. U.S. involvement, he contends, would have kept the Iraqi Army more organized and effective without putting America lives at risk. “We will now have a terrorist state far more dangerous than the Taliban ever had in Afghanistan,” he said.

The economy: Ryan said the country is “still stagnant” and is on a path toward a debt crisis much like the one suffered by several European countries in recent years. “We are in this rut right now, (but) when I look around I see seeds of hope,” he said. “I really think if we get a handful of things right … we can turn it around.” Ryan mentioned reform of the tax code and health care as the most prominent on that list.