"I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity. And I know we can do this. I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us with opportunity for the young and security for the old. And I know that we are ready."
After graciously accepting the nomination as the next Vice President of the United States, and setting the tone and context, he quickly began laying down the law...
"I have never seen opponents so silent about their record, and so desperate to keep their power. They have run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they've got left. With all of their attack ads the president is just throwing away money. And he is pretty experienced at that."
Ryan segued into a personal story affecting his hometown that echoes across the streets of America...a story about a perceived hope in government and the bailouts that followed, but ultimately ending in failure, betrayal and little-to-no recovery. After describing what happened to a hometown G.M. plant, and the people that lost those jobs, Ryan says of Obama's first term 'change'...
"...that's how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is no where in sight. Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. 23 million people unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all."
"So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?"
Tracing the steps of failure from the very beginning, Ryan dove right into the first troubling sign of the stimulus, and the ensuing cronyism and debt that followed...
"You -- you the American people of this country were cut out of the deal. What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted, it was borrowed, spent and wasted."
And you know what came shortly after that: ObamaCare. Ryan framed this power-grab in the effective context that all need to be reminded of...
"Maybe the greatest waste of all, was time. Here we were faced with a massive job crisis so deep that if everyone out of work stood in single file, that unemployment line would stretch the length of the entire American continent."
"You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation and nothing else his first order of economic business, but this president didn't do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive, all or nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care."
"ObamaCare comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country."
"The president has declared that the debate over government controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of American who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal ObamaCare."
And reminding everyone that "the biggest, coldest power play of all in ObamaCare came at the expense of the elderly" throught the Medicare raid, Ryan put opponents on notice:
"In this election, on this issue , the usual posturing on the Left isn't going to work. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate, we want this debate, we will win this debate."
Atop ObamaCare, Ryan then laid out Obama's first term record from beginning to dismal end:
- It began with a financial crisis; it ends with a job crisis.
- It began with a housing crisis they alone didn't cause; it ends with a housing crisis they didn't correct.
- It began with a perfect AAA credit rating for the United States; it ends with the downgraded America.
Damn...and this has barely scratched the surface of Paul Ryan's extraordinarily brilliant observations and comments of the night! Ok, ok...
Of Obama's lofty self-evaluation asked of him from a sympathetic press, and confiding that perhaps he hadn't communicated enough, that he needs to better "tell a story to the American people," Ryan so succinctly states...
"Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years, we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What is missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago. Isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?"
Right on!
"One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt."
"So here we are, $16 trillion in debt and still he does nothing. In Europe, massive debts have put entire governments at risk of collapse, and still he does nothing. And all we have heard from this president and his team are attacks on anyone who dares to point out the obvious."
"They have no answer to this simple reality: We need to stop spending money we don't have."
It IS as simple as that.
And as for Obama's 'You didn't build that' statement, Ryan once again tells it like it needs to be said...
"Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores, these didn't come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one."
"And if small business people say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them."
"After all that work, and in a bad economy, it sure doesn't help to hear from their president that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that."
Ryan went on to outline their campaign's plan to make a 'clean break' with both the Obama years and the previous Bush years, keeping federal spending at 20% of GDP or less, while maintaining a goal of generating 12 million jobs over the next four years.
The issue is not the economy that Barack Obama inherited, not the economy as he envisions, but this economy that we are living. One of my personal favorite segments from Ryan's speech came immediately after a rather keen observation that "College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life."
"Everyone -- everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you're feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you."
"None of us -- none of us have to settle for the best this administration offers, a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free BUT US."
"Listen to the way we're already spoken to -- listen to the way we are spoken to already, as if everyone is stuck in some class or station in life, victims of circumstances beyond our control, with government there to help us cope with our fate. It's the exact opposite of everything I learned growing up..."
"Now when I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey, where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That's what we do in this country. That's the American dream."
"That's freedom, and I will take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners."
HELL YEAH!! This could have come from the lips of Levin! But he wasn't done with these conservative truths...
"By the way, being successful in business, that's a good thing."
Towards his closing remarks, Ryan spoke of the moral creed he shares with Romney; one which you'll never hear Obama utter, but one that would make our Founders well up with pride that principle might return to leadership...
"We believe that in every life, there is goodness, for every person there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the lord of life."
"We have responsibilities, one to another. We do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves."
"Each of these great moral ideas is essential to democratic government, to the rule of law, to life in a humane and decent society. They are the moral creed of our country, as powerful in our time, as on the day of America's founding. They are self-evident and unchanging, and sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, and not from government."
"The founding generation secured those rights for us, and in every generation since, the best among us have defended our freedoms. They are protecting us right now. We honor them and all our veterans, and we thank them."
You know, now as I take in everything this statesman has said, I should rephrase my original statement...the night was not only Paul Ryan's, but America's...if she'll take it.
Additional Sources: FoxNews
