In a just-published piece, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur C. Brooks explains the virtues of "Ryanism" as both good policy and transformative politics.
"Ryanism" celebrates private entrepreneurship, demands lower taxation, and is willing to take on the hard issues of structural reforms to programs – and it offers conservatism a way to define itself in the wake of the 2008 defeat.
The Ryan approach is "feared and loathed by the left," and it gives millions of American conservatives something to vote for, rather than voting for Republicans as the lesser of two evils:
"Ryanism is now an official voice of establishment Republicanism. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, Americans might just find they have a national political party centered on free enterprise and American greatness."
Arthur Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of the New York Times best-seller The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise (Basic Books, 2012). He can be reached through danielle.duncan@aei.org (202.419.5213).
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