For those of you who don’t subscribe to OpinionJournal’s Political Diary, you missed an outlining of some of the reasons why the ‘Rats cannot be allowed back in power by Rep. Paul Ryan. It deserves to be archived somewhere, and since for reasons beyond my comprehension the WSJ doesn’t archive any of the Political Diary, I may as well give you a reason to not miss tomorrow’s edition:
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan dropped by our offices yesterday with an answer to the question: Why not cheer for Republicans to go down to defeat this November? Maybe a period in the wilderness is exactly what the GOP needs to rediscover its soul as the party of conservative reform.
Mr. Ryan says it’s a seductive thought. A young conservative serving his fourth term, he hasn’t lost sight of the reason he’s in Washington in the first place — to reform the unsustainable federal entitlement programs and bring them to heel. His name is on the best-known plan to introduce private accounts into the Social Security system.
But Mr. Ryan says the GOP’s “brush with death” this year may be sufficient to slap some sense into it. Handing Members “walking around money” to spend on pork barrel projects for their districts “didn’t work,” he says. Republicans now find their majority threatened by voters irate over their excessive spending in pursuit of permanent incumbency. One hopeful sign is the earmark reform enacted by the House last week. Under pressure from Mr. Ryan and a handful of others, the Appropriations Committee accepted new rules that require Members to put their names next to earmarks they insert in spending bills.
Mr. Ryan didn’t spend a lot of time wargaming the GOP’s chances this year. His own seat is safe for now: Five liberal Democrats battled for the privilege of taking him on, but the winner — with a mere 25% of the vote — was the same 66-year-old retired orthopedic surgeon Mr. Ryan’s already beaten twice. But Mr. Ryan says conservatives should think twice before concluding there’s nothing at risk in locking the GOP out of power. The window of opportunity for serious entitlement reform will only be open until the baby boomers become entrenched in retirement. With the first wave of boomers now entering their 60s, time is running out, he says.
