Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - 12:28 pm:

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Over the last four years, this President has pushed Republicans and Democrats as far apart as they can go. And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces.

If an American president wins that way, we all lose.

But he won’t win that way. America is one Nation under God. American history has been a story of the many becoming one - uniting to preserve liberty, uniting to build the greatest economy in the world, uniting to save the world from unspeakable darkness. Everywhere I go in America there are monuments that list those who have given their lives. There is no mention of their race, their party affiliation or what they did for a living. They lived and died under a single flag fighting for a single purpose. They pledged allegiance to the United States of America. So, Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America.

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Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - 01:35 pm:

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Rep. Paul Ryan Vs. President Obama
Published on Apr 10, 2012 by Forbes

Chairman of the House Budget Committee Congressman Paul Ryan on what the GOP needs to focus on in the 2012 presidential election to win back the White House. From his keynote address at the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Tax Policies for 4% Growth Conference at the New York Historical Society:

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Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 05:49 am:

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"...it ought to embarrass President Obama."

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Radford Business Owner Declines Request From Joe Biden's Entourage To Stop In Store
The owner of Crumb and Get It says he doesn't agree with the Obama administration's policies

"This is an opportunity of a lifetime but essentially I said 'No offense to you or the campaign but I just decline you guys coming in here. At that time she said 'Are you sure? There's going to be a lot of press, a lot of activity,’" McMurray said.

Why in the world would a new business owner say "no" to a photo op with the Vice President of the United States?

McMurray said it was President Obama's recent remarks about small business and who built what.

"Very simply, ‘you didn't build that’” McMurray said. “Speaking of small businesses and entrepreneurs all across this country and actually last night my wife was up all night. No sleep, she's worked a full 24 hours."

Read the entire article and watch the video here: http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wdbj7-radford-business-o wner-declines-joe-bidens-request-to-stop-in-store- 20120815,0,4370357.story

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Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 07:21 am:

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The Ryan Down Payment
By Artur Davis ~ Monday, August 13, 2012

I will offer the obligatory caveat: I know Paul Ryan from serving with him on two congressional committees during the eight years I spent in the House. It is not fair to call him a friend, at least not in the way human beings who aren’t politicians use that term, but I liked him a great deal. I liked the little things–when he engaged you in conversation, you had his attention and his eyes didn’t drift in search of a more powerful member, or a potential donor–and I admired the more consequential things, like his genuine smarts and the fact that when he spoke on the floor or in hearings, you heard the product of an active mind that didn’t need ghostwriting or lobbyist drafted talking points.

Frankly, I don’t know the politics of the pick. The Obama campaign is way too thrilled at this announcement to attribute it just to gamesmanship or wishfulness: they know that the Ryan budget plan has not polled well, that its realignment of Medicare unsettles seniors, and that to some independents (and at one point, Newt Gingrich) it looks more like ideological engineering than a response to our current bout of economic stagnation. A campaign whose allies just wrapped a woman’s death around Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, facts be damned, will not shrink from painting Ryan as a cold-blooded, Ayn Rand inspired radical who puts theory over people. (If you have never heard of the libertarian writer and polemicist for whom Ryan has expressed admiration, Democratic opposition researchers will endeavor to change that.)

My guess (and hope) is the Democratic attack will be so undisciplined that it is excessive and that Ryan, an imminently decent and pleasant man, looks to Americans nothing like the caricature that Democrats are about to paint. The campaigner who has won easily in a district Barack Obama carried has the raw ability to make a case that his budget really is a blueprint for a shared prosperity. He has flourished making that argument in settings more rigorous than the ritual anchor sit-downs that are coming, and he will not be intimidated by the skeptical, arched eyebrows of his interrogators, or by Joe Biden’s put-downs.

I also think Ryan can and will point out that an entitlement structure built for a population that rarely lived past seventy has to be refitted for a future where octogenarians are the fastest rising age demographic; that universal, one size fits all Medicare coverage has always been more a political bribe to sustain support than some solemn moral commitment; that government over-promising its capacities is itself immoral; and that the first casualties of an entitlement train-wreck would be the poor and the vulnerable, who most need the current compact to be amended so its best parts can survive.

My other hopes are that Paul Ryan’s reformer instincts aren’t just built around budgets. Conservatism needs to adopt education reform as a cause, not just as a wedge against the selfishness of teachers unions, but as the most effective instrument to reduce inequality. Conservatism needs not just to repeal Obamacare but to replace it with a market based correction to the inadequacies of the status quo. The political right has to reclaim legal immigration as a point of pride and to distance itself from overheated claims about “us” losing “our” culture: that means much less talk about “self-deportation” crusades against illegal immigrants, much more confidence in assimilation, much more focus on an immigration regime that privileges individual responsibility and families.

The guy I admired from across the aisle and sometimes chatted with gets all of the above, and may provide the center-right its most artful and effective political advocate. I think that Ryan knows that his party’s survival rests on conservatism growing and adapting to a changed economic world in a way that liberalism never has.

So, without minimizing the risk in claiming a space that Democrats have effectively attacked for years, I felt inspired seeing Paul Ryan rise from obscurity to the epicenter of politics in 24 hours. It’s an ascension that is well-earned: not one of his generational peers has used time as a lawmaker more seriously or more assertively. (The contrast with Obama–whose 12 uneventful years in the state and national Senate were spent running for, or exploring runs for, higher office–is palpable). If this ends well, a campaign that has been accused of running a prevent defense without being ahead has just made a serious down-payment on its party’s future.

Source: http://www.officialarturdavis.com/2012/08/the-ryan -downpayment/

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