Paul Ryan admitted it took him a good six months to get over his loss to President Obama and Joe Biden.
And a year later, the wounds on the former GOP vice presidential nominee still seem raw.
At a fundraiser for Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa Saturday night, the Wisconsin congressman bemoaned the 2012 defeat in a dull and, at times, awkward speech that failed to extract the rapturous reaction one would expect for a rising star or potential 2016 presidential candidate.
Perhaps the crowd caught a bit of the 2012 bug Ryan was still carrying.
“We were in a funk for a good six months because we made mistakes,” he acknowledged, adding that it was “obviously very frustrating.”
“I think one of the problems that Mitt and I had was we were arguing against big government in theory We had to campaign against big government in theory,” he argued, noting that most of the provisions of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank didn’t begin getting implemented until 2013. ”Here’s the difference now, we’ve got big government in practice. And what we are realizing is that the results are nothing close to what was used to sell it,” he argued.
Obama carried Iowa by 5 points.
“Next time you have a famous politician coming through Iowa, breezing through the towns, talking about big government, let’s be a little more skeptical,” Ryan said, as if the mostly Republican audience he was speaking to had voted to reelect the president.
The visit marked Ryan’s first stop to the Hawkeye State since 2012. For most of this year, Ryan has made few moves that would telegraph he’s plotting a White House campaign, instead focusing on governing. He’s been tasked by Republicans to try to hammer out a budget agreement by Dec. 13.
Ryan took several shots at the widespread problems plaguing the health care law and prodded GOP activists to defeat Rep. Bruce Braley in the 2014 Senate race as punishment for his vote on the legislation. Yet in a rare forward-looking snippet of the speech, he said Republicans must show Americans that they are “not just the opposition party, but the proposition party.”
In addition to Branstad, Ryan name-checked and thanked Rep. Tom Latham and Sen. Chuck Grassley but did not mention Rep. Steve King, the most vocally conservative member of the delegation.
“Maybe we should come back and do this more often. People are really friendly here,” Ryan said, in a hint that was clearly meant to signal he’s keeping the presidential door open.
He could’ve used a few more friendly folks in the room tonight.
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