I have a column in the latest issue of National Review (payment required to view online) on how the Romney-Ryan campaign can offer Americans a compelling alternative to Obama’s health care plan.
It has also helped the Romney campaign tremendously that Ryan is carrying much of the load. He knows these issues cold, because he is a prominent budget expert, and health care in general, and Medicare specifically, are central to the nation’s long-term budgetary troubles. Ryan’s adeptness in debating the topic was on full display at the February 2010 White House “summit” on health care, during which Ryan dismantled the phony deficit-reduction claims the president and congressional Democrats were making about Obamacare.
The challenge for the Romney-Ryan ticket is to channel the political momentum generated by this early Medicare counterattack into a larger conversation about broad visions for health care. Although Obamacare remains unpopular, it will be difficult to uproot it without articulating a compelling replacement strategy that can solve the problems in the health-care sector without Obamacare’s massive expense and heavy-handed government coercion. Here again, Ryan will be indispensable, because he has become one of the party’s most articulate and persuasive advocates of a patient-driven health-care system.
You can find the rest of the article here.