Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) says he’s not calling out his Republican Party — although he does say that the GOP has a lack of centralized leadership and specifics on the big issues.
Speaking at a Brookings Institution event last week, Ryan was asked why more conservatives were not backing his roadmap plan for privatizing Medicare and Social Security, converting them into sets of vouchers and private accounts. “They’re talking to their pollsters and their pollsters are saying, ‘Stay away from this. We’re going to win an election,'” Ryan said. He also said: “Unfortunately, you know, when I jumped in the pool and encouraged other people to jump in the pool, we haven’t had many other folks swimming around. And that’s from both sides of the aisle, I would say.”
Ryan has now told the Daily Caller in an interview: “We are a decentralized party right now from a leadership standpoint. We don’t have some obvious nominee, and who knows who that’s going to be. So I just feel like it’s important for some of us to step in and help define the moment.”
Ryan added: “I’m not calling my party out … I’m just adding ideas to the pile to try and move the debate forward.”
On the other hand, he also told the Daily Caller that the party as a whole would be coming out with more specifics soon:
Ryan said the GOP will produce a comprehensive platform after the end of summer, once the results of their “America Speaking Out” program — which is soliciting opinions from every day Americans — are in.
“There is a belief that let’s put details out there in the fall, when people are really beginning to pay attention. So I’m not disappointed because I know a lot is coming in the very near future,” Ryan said.
“Nobody pays attention to politics in the summer where I come from. So it’s really, ‘Let’s put this out there when people are paying attention,’ not, ‘Let’s put it out there when there’s not enough time to scrutinize it,'” he said. “We want to have a serious and intense conversation with Americans, and we want to do it at a time when we know they’re going to be focused and paying attention.”
