Time: “To be a Republican leader these days is to be hated, by primary voters, Tea Partiers and your own party’s presidential candidates, and for the last several years, it has meant getting very little if anything accomplished. Ryan has set it upon himself to break both of those trends. Rather than serving, as Boehner did, as a punch line for late night television, Ryan intends to lead his party, even amid a presidential campaign, transforming both its focus and its tactics. He is conspiring with his more radical members, while at the same time trying to curb his own party’s radical tendencies. He aims to take the ideology of conservatism, with its fundamentally nostalgic roots, into the 21st Century.”
Said Ryan: “I want to make us the party of ideas, to offer the nation an alternative plan, an agenda. I really believe that we have an obligation given that we don’t like the direction the country is headed, people should be given a choice as to the direction of America. We must offer that vision, should show people what that looks like.”
