In January 2011, we at TWS had the notion that it would be good to defeat President Obama in 2012. And so in a blog post we asked the sensible question: ” Wouldn’t it be easier just to agree now on a Ryan-Rubio ticket, and save everyone an awful lot of time, effort, and money over the next year and a half?” We reiterated that thought in the spring and summer.
Ryan-Rubio 2012 was not to be. And so an awful lot of time, effort and money was expended, and the presidency was lost for four more years. It’s true that Paul Ryan ended up as Mitt Romney’s running mate, but the vice presidential candidate can’t shape the message or define the ticket. It was Mitt Romney’s election to win or lose. He–and we–lost.
But life is a long and winding road, as they say. That road led last week to Paul Ryan being installed as Speaker of the House of Representatives the day after Marco Rubio established himself in the presidential debate as a likely finalist for the GOP nomination. Rubio established himself at the expense of Jeb Bush. Ryan replaced John Boehner. And so the generational transition in the Republican Party is in full swing.
We won’t have a Ryan-Rubio ticket in 2016. But we will have a Republican Party headed by Ryan in Washington, and quite possibly with Rubio or Ted Cruz as the nominee. And is it too much to ask Mitch McConnell to agree to step back as the face of the GOP Senate, and allow articulate freshmen in their thirties and forties like Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner and Ben Sasse and Joni Ernst and James Lankford and Dan Sullivan sometimes to become the public faces of the Senate majority? Then the torch will truly have been passed to a new Republican generation–and an attractive and competent one to boot.
Meanwhile, the Democrats look very likely to nominate their oldest presidential nominee ever, who will fit in with their all-Social-Security leadership team in Congress of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in the House and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
There’s of course no guarantee that the younger party will have the fresher ideas or the more daring spirit. But it’s a start.
