In the New York Post today, I explain that Paul Ryan has brought together two strands of conservatism that have been in an uneasy relation for decades: Fiscal conservatism and small-government conservatism.
The secret of Paul Ryan is that he is a blend of the two; philosophically a small-government conservative, managerially a fiscal conservative.
He wants to reduce the size of government for the reasons the Tea Party elucidated — that Big Government saps individual initiative and is a betrayal of the rights enumerated in the Constitution. But he has also mastered the language and the approach of the fiscal conservatives, and has used them to get very specific about the threat posed to the American future by the coming tsunami in entitlement spending.
You can read the whole thing here.
