Posted on 07/31/2013 12:30:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I think he’s going to end up not running, but if his favorables stay this high, maybe he has no choice.
He’s technically “next in line” and he’d make a decent compromise candidate (as would fellow Wisconsinite Scott Walker) for righties who are leery of Christie, Paul, and Rubio for various reasons. Second look at Paul Ryan?
Are Ryan’s numbers really that surprising? He’s been overlooked on blogs lately because we’ve all been busy shaking our fists at Rubio over immigration and gawking at the Rand Paul/Chris Christie brawl, but thanks to 2012, Ryan’s name recognition is sky high. He’s a warrior on the budget but soft-spoken enough not to spook moderates. Grassroots righties are newly steamed at him because he seems to be slipping into the Rubio role in the House of pushing conservatives towards a deal on amnesty, but nothing’s happened yet and he’s smart enough to keep a much lower profile on the issue than Rubio did. Most low-information voters on our side probably know him as that nice young guy from the midwest who’s deeply concerned that our spending is unsustainable. Why wouldn’t he be at 65 percent favorables? And why wouldn’t he have better numbers with tea partiers than with centrists? His core issue is reforming the welfare state. Centrists resist that, partly because they’re more comfortable with bigger government and partly because they’re probably more sensitive on balance to “electability” concerns. Conservatives might be willing to risk a ferocious political backlash in the name of fixing entitlements. I doubt many centrists are.
The real surprise is Rand Paul’s numbers. His favorables among tea partiers are now 11 points better than Rubio’s, thanks in part to immigration, of course. But his numbers among non-tea-partiers are comparable to centrist hero Chris Christie’s and amnesty champion Marco Rubio’s. Maybe that’ll change in the primaries as his philosophy is scrutinized more closely; if centrists think Paul Ryan is too much of a threat to the welfare state, wait ’til they get a load of the great libertarian hope. Christie’s unfavorables among non-TPers are also a mild surprise. I wonder if that’s more a reaction to his policies or to fatigue with his tough-guy shtick. Either way, maybe he’s more vulnerable than we thought.
One more graph:
For all the babbling about party divisions lately vis-a-vis defunding ObamaCare, there’s only minor division on immigration. Pluralities on both the right and in the center think the GOP should be more conservative about the border. Tell me something, though: What would it mean for the party to be “more conservative” on gay marriage at this point? Despite a heavy tide nationally and in government in favor of legalizing SSM, only a handful of congressional Republicans have come out in support of it. House Republicans sued to enforce DOMA because Obama’s DOJ refused to. Rubio declared that benefits for gay spouses under the Gang of Eight bill would have been a dealbreaker for him. What should the party be doing to please social conservatives that it isn’t? Forget about the Federal Marriage Amendment. That’s nothing but a rhetorical device at this point; it’ll never pass.
I’m loath to close with something from Think Progress but if their transcript of this Paul Ryan townhall vid is accurate, it’s news. Here he is on immigration reform:
RYAN: [...] Bringing these bills to the floor, we’ll find out. It is not, “they don’t come to the floor unless we have a majority of the majority,” because we don’t know if we have a majority until we vote on it. So here’s where I see things going. I’ve spoken to John Boehner as recently as three days ago about this, which is, we all agree it is better to legislate in stages instead of one big thousand plus page bill that no one has read. [...] I’m trying to get to a consensus so a majority of us do support those component parts. I believe that’s achievable because when people really look at the details and they focus on what’s right, I believe what I’ve just laid out is something that a consensus of Republicans and Democrats can agree to.
Is that quote accurate? The audio makes it hard to tell. The whole point of the Hastert Rule is not to bring bills to the floor until the Speaker knows that a majority of his caucus supports them. Doing it the way Ryan describes (or seems to describe) would mean abandoning the Hastert Rule; you bring the bill to the floor, kinda sorta hoping/expecting that a majority of GOPers will vote for it, and if it turns out that only a few dozen do — plus 200 Democrats, such that the bill passes — then whoopsie! Guess they miscalculated. Is that what he’s saying or did TP misunderstand?
As this may well be America’s last election (if the Dems win, every “election” after this will be a mere ascendancy to the throne), I vow, this day, that I will not vote...WILL NOT VOTE for anyone who is not a TRUE conservative. As of now, I can only see the following as those I would vote for:
Ted Cruz
Sarah Palin
Allen West
I will never, ever vote for:
Chris Christie
Marco Rubio
Paul Ryan
Anyone whose “time has come” as deemed by the GOP
We must take the party back before we take the country back. Failure to do that in the next election (2014/2016) and this country is well-past over.
And I think McCain has moved from RINO to full Democrat this week. I would take that to mean he's decided not to run again, so he can take his mask off and be the liberal he's always wanted to be.
How public sector. You get the nod because you've been in line the longest. How about we get "best in line" like the real world works?
RE: If it’s Ryan I’m staying home. Been there done that.
Would you have stayed home if it were Reagan vs Carter?
After all, Reagan couldn’t even beat the hapless Gerald Ford in 1976.... been there done that?
Ryan is no Reagan.
I don’t think we can find another Reagan anytime soon. But does that mean you’re just going to let Hillary romp?
As if Ryan would have a chance anyway.
Everything at this point in time is speculation of course.
I was just responding to the other poster who said that IF IT WERE Paul Ryan, he’d stay home.
Ryan ain’t perfect... but if he were the candidate, I’d take him over any Democrat alternative. I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Sorry, I held my nose for McLame and Romney....Never Again!
Well, if it were really Paul Ryan, all I can say is I hope there are very few of you in 2016.
>>As with identity theft and other things, do AMERICAN CITIZENS also get amnesty for the same crimes??<<
Why would you grant amnesty for acts other than illegally entering the country?
However, your point illustrates why separate issues should be taken up in separate bills. If one of the bills addressed amnesty alone, your point would certainly be raised and addressed. Why stop at identity theft? How about rape, murder? Clearly, amnesty should solely the issue of a previous illegal entry.
And remember, amnesty is not legalization. Depending upon the terms of a legalization bill, amnesty might just allow an illegal to come out and be deported and thereby avoid the risk of jail time for failing to do so.
So you are for amnesty—and any kind of legalization is amnesty, BTW—because it’s going to happen anyway? Isn’t that the mindset by which RINOs always capitulate to Democrats?
We’re for what they want, we just want it to be a hair more incremental than how Democrats would like to implement it?
And, if you think any of this crap is going to be passed without citizenship following on very rapidly you are deluded. If you are not deluded, you are trying to delude us into thinking that massive citizenship, including the chain migration of today’s 30 million illegals into 90 million isn’t going to happen.
Pew—always polling for liberal propaganda.
Look how they put disapproval of the tea party together with no opinion of the tea party so it doesn’t look like the tea party is favored overall.
Ryan is a big pro-amnesty fraud, just like Rubio.
Look how much stronger the respondents think the GOP should be against amnesty. That’s why Rubio’s numbers have come down, but voters don’t realize that Ryan’s taking as traitorous a position on it in the House as Rubio did in the Senate.
Beyond that and Ryan’s being one of Boehner’s flying monkeys with only tepid budget bills anyway, he has a massive charisma deficit. Look how much of a cipher he was as Romney’s running mate.
>>So you are for amnesty—and any kind of legalization is amnesty, BTW—because it’s going to happen anyway?<<
No, I’m for amnesty because it’s the right thing to do to straighten out the mess we’ve created by ignoring our immigration laws for so long.
We need to first secure the border and then we need to decide who should be allowed to remain here legally. Yes, that would mean “legalization” but “legalization” doesn’t mean “citizenship.” All it means is that we decide who should be allowed to remain here with a legal green card, either working or attending school, or as child of such a parent.
Once we’ve described who we want to grant legal status to, then we grant amnesty to anyone who comes out of the shadows to either: a) be given a green card, or b) be sent home without jail time or other penalty.
For example, if an illegal has worked here for years, but doesn’t qualify for a green card due to an exception written into the legalization process (maybe he’s a felon, or no longer has a job, or just arrived in recent months) do you first make him pay all the taxes he’s avoided by working off the books? Do you jail him if he doesn’t pay them? Or do you send him home?
I’m guessing you’d send him straight home, but in doing so you’d be granting him an amnesty by foregoing the taxes he owes.
Everyone who doesn’t “come out” during the amnesty (to then be deported or given a legal green card) would then remain an illegal, but if the border were secure, and there were far fewer illegals after the amnesty, those remaining could practically be dealt with much more severely, i.e., with jail time before deportation, no hope of ever returning, and obviously no route to ever obtaining citizenship.
It’s a mess. Someone’s got to fix it. I wouldn’t trust the Democrats to do it, but someone has to. Frankly, I like Paul Ryan’s approach of going at it one step at a time. The last step of such a process should be to have everything in place and then implement the amnesty and sort out who goes and who stays with legal work or student status.
Any route to citizenship should be one of those separate issues and all routes should be clarified before the amnesty is implemented. And it shouldn’t be easy to achieve, if at all, since you’re dealing with people who came here illegally in the first place.
The obvious fix is simply to enforce the law. Granting the 30 million illegals here any kind of legal status will inevitably lead to citizenship—and for governments as bad and as leftist as are the norm in Latin America.
That is national suicide and we have no moral obligation to inflict that upon ourselves.
Granting legal status does not have to lead to citizenship. In fact, why shouldn’t Canadians be able to work here, as well as Mexicans and people from South America? And why shouldn’t we be able to work in Canada or Mexico or South America with green cards or visas of our own? Open your mind a little. Think libery and the rule of law, not restrictions and isolationism.
As for HIspanics leaning left, if anything the ones coming here to work who want to stay are as likely to be conservative as liberal, provided the GOP isn’t filled with people who think and write like you do.
But to vote they’d have to become citizens first. There’s no need to write the law legalizing their presence here to also include a certain path to citizenship. In fact, because they came here illegally, they should go to the end of the line, if they’re permitted to apply at all.
Again, my point is that Ryan is correct in wanting to tackle the immigration issue one step at a time. Legalization, amnesty, and citizenship are three separate issues, and border control is yet another. Tackling them all at one time will result in another Obamacare-type mess, as the Senate bill illustrates.
I think most people know what we’d be getting by legalizing Mexicans. The question for Americans is do we want millions of additional Mexicans living, working and voting in the U.S.
Quit conflating “legalization” with “citizenship.”
By law, you have to be a citizen to legally vote in a U.S. election. Legalized Hispanics will not be able to vote.
As for millions of Mexicans living and working in the U.S., they’re already doing exactly that! What we need to do is pass legislation that encourages them to do so legally, rather than illegally. Thousands of businesses and farms depend upon Hispanic laborers to function today, many of them here illegally (maybe most of them?) We need to transition to a system where they are here legally and we know that they’re here, and we know when they are required to return to their home country. Right now, none of that is done.
And, as I keep saying, before that can be even attempted we have to get control of our borders.
As for “most people” knowing what we’d get, try talking to someone who actually hires them sometime. Most of them are willing to work their butts off to make money. I remember a time when that used to be considered a virtue in this country.
But I suppose if you live in a state that will let an illegal alien apply for food stamps, get rent support, and probably even vote Democrat, your perception of them is different than mine. But that’s the fault of the legislators who allow it. You can create shiftless people if you throw enough free money their way. We’ve been doing it to Americans for decades. It works. They eventually become wards of the state unable to support themselves.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.