Krauthammer: Ryan May Have Strongly Positive Effect on Election

While vice presidential candidates have historically had little impact on the election outcome, Republican Paul Ryan may prove different, helping Mitt Romney to victory, says conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.

As long as Romney and Ryan can rebut Democrats’ charges that they would harm Medicare, Ryan offers an array of pluses, Krauthammer writes.

First, “Ryan nationalizes the election and makes it ideological, reprising the 2010 dynamic that delivered a shellacking to the Democrats.”

Second, “If the conversation is about big issues, Obama cannot hide from his dismal economic record and complete failure of vision,” Krauthammer maintains.

And finally, there’s image. “Ryan, fresh and 42, brings youth, energy, and vitality — the very qualities Obama projected in 2008 and has by now depleted,” Krauthammer writes. “Hope and change has become the other guy killed a steelworker’s wife.”

While Ryan’s success this year depends on the outcome of Democrats’ efforts to skewer Romney and Ryan on Medicare, “there is less doubt about the meaning of Ryan’s selection for beyond 2012,” Krauthammer states. “He could well become the face of Republicanism for a generation.”

Ryan’s job during the campaign is to offer serious solutions to the nation’s grave problems, he says. That’s “a hardheaded, sober-hearted conservatism that puts to shame a reactionary liberalism that, with Greece in our future, offers handouts, bromides and a 4.6 percent increase in tax rates,” Krauthammer writes.

“If Ryan does it well, win or lose in 2012, he becomes a dominant national force. Mild and moderate Mitt Romney will have shaped the conservative future for years to come.”