Sunday, January 27, 2013

Paul Ryan: Republicans Can’t ‘Get Rattled’ in Conflicts With Obama

Republicans “have to be smart” in opposing President Obama, Wscionsin Rep. Paul Ryan said Saturday in a speech to the National Review Summit. - Robert Stacy McCain/American Spectator

“If we play into his hands, we will betray the voters who supported us — and the country we mean to serve,” said Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman who was the Republican vice presidential candidate last year. “We can’t let that happen. We have to be smart. We have to show prudence.”

Speaking to some 700 conservatives gathered at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Ryan warned that Obama “will bait us. He’ll portray us as cruel and unyielding. … The way he tells it, it’s the president — and only the president — who’s trying to fix our bridges, to feed our children, to care for seniors, to clean our water. … But we can’t get rattled. We won’t play the villain in his morality plays. We have to stay united. We have to show that — if given the chance — we can govern. We have better ideas.”

Former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina on Sunday said it’s clear that President Obama “plans to keep spending and borrowing and putting more debt on our children.” - Amy Woods/Newsmax

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” DeMint also praised former GOP vice presidential nominee and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan for his comments on the same program regarding the president’s apparent failure to recognize that the U.S. has a fiscal crisis.

DeMint said. “We can show where President Obama’s ideas go. The tax-and-spend and big-government approach has always failed us. Our job as conservatives is to make sure Americans know that, and we need to show it with real people and real faces.”

He called Ryan’s ideas a “complete contrast” to Obama’s.