Norquist: Paul Ryan’s Budget Helps Romney Win

Ronald Kessler reporting from Washington, D.C. — Contrary to what many Democrats and some Republicans think, Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is a boon to Mitt Romney’s campaign, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, tells Newsmax.

“Some Democrats hope that now that Ryan has been chosen as Romney’s running mate, that means the presidential candidate is endorsing the Ryan budget, and therefore there is this juicy target,” Norquist, a driving force of the conservative movement, says. “And some Republicans fear that this will happen.”

Grover Norquist believes that Ryan's budget plan is a boon to the Romney campaign. (Getty Images)

Not to worry, Norquist says. He points out that that was what pundits and some political experts said about Ronald Reagan when he ran for president and won in 1981.

“They said that because Reagan believed in things, people would be able to attack his beliefs,” Norquist says. “It’s also what was said in 2000 when George W. Bush ran for president and endorsed privatizing Social Security with a specific plan.”

Regardless of whether Republicans have a plan or not, “Democrats always attack Republicans, saying that they’re going to go after Social Security and Medicare,” Norquist says. “Lying about a plan that is in black and white is much harder.”

“The old Democrat position — lie about the Republican position and assert that they want to damage it for old people — didn’t work in the past when the plan was written down for Social Security,” Norquist says. “Same thing this time. The Democrats were always going to attack the Republicans for wanting to gut Medicare. But Ryan’s plan says no one over age 55 will be affected, so voters don’t get scared. The younger people will say this plan is good because Obama has no plan to make sure that Medicare will be there for them.”

Beyond Norquist’s points, the belief that the choice of Ryan helps Democrats, ignores the fact that today most Americans understand that the country faces a financial crisis and that steps must be taken to fix it. Since the recession began, Americans have tightened their own belts and expect the government to do the same.

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If you doubt that the outlook of the country has changed, look at the results of the 2010 midterm election: With cutting government spending and attacking the fiscal crisis as major issues, the GOP won back six Senate seats and 63 seats and the majority in the House of Representatives. That led President Obama to say he had suffered a “shellacking.”

Republicans also won the majority of the country’s governorships. More recently, Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin withstood a recall vote protesting his cutbacks in government spending.

What’s more, Democrats’ attacks on the Ryan plan give Romney an opening to point out that Obamacare takes away $716 billion from projected increases in Medicare payments to providers.

As Norquist says, rather than being a drawback, the Ryan budget plan helps give Romney a win.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is the New York Times bestselling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. Read more reports from Ronald Kessler — Click Here Now.