One of the leading opponents on Congress of the Democrats’ healthcare plans is Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Over the next two weeks, he will have a series of townhalls in his district to talk about healthcare.

RedState has obtained an email showing the Democrats and Barack Obama’s own Organizing for America are working to actively disrupt Paul Ryan’s townhalls.

In the email, Democrat activists Kelly Gallaher sends out a series of instructions for activists, telling them to keep them secret.

She writes that “the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Organizing for America, and Community for Change are wroking together to promote attendance at these sessions.”

At each session there’ll be a 4 page brochure on “Organizing for Health Care”; “information on why Paul Ryan’s health care plan is wrong”; “Contact information for Ryan, Feingold, Kohl and [Organizing for America]“; and other items.

She adds “if we encounter official resistance to our table, we will have bags to carry all the same information. The rally signs may not be allowed in the actual meeting place.” Why would there be official resistance? Well, this is a townhall for a Congressman, not a rally for Organizing for America.

The stated goal is “to overwhelm each session with reform supporters.

But it’s not just that.

On August 27th, Congressman Ryan is going to have one townhall in Racine, WI, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Ms. Gallaher writes, “For the Racine session, which runs until 2:30, we have reserved the room until 5pm, so the session can continue with or without Paul Ryan. (That is a bit of secret, so don’t tell Paul Ryan!)

In other words, they are going to try to drum up some bad PR for the Congressman — all using Barack Obama’s own horde of volunteers.

The best way to combat this is to show up yourselves. Get all the details from Kelly Gallaher’s email.

Congressman Paul Ryan is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, and this clip of him schooling Katrina vanden Heuvel - one that’s been going around the blogosphere lately - is well worth watching. Ryan lays out the problems with the Democrat approach, and demonstrates vanden Heuvel’s misunderstanding of the issues superbly:

But the real surprise is not that Ryan did so well, it’s that vanden Heuvel didn’t come better prepared. Ryan has been consistently taking apart his liberal opponents for a while now. When I saw this debate, my first thought was of how he disarmed Arianna Huffington a few weeks ago in a debate over PayGo:

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On Tuesday night, be given a health care bill the size of Delaware that nobody in your office had a chance to read (over 1,000 pages, in this case).

On Wednesday, watch it be jammed through various committees.

On Thursday, find out from that the nonpartisan oversight group that’s supposed to be regulating this sort of thing hasn’t been able to read it, either.

Note that none of this is considered sufficiently important enough by the Democratic leadership to be worth taking the extra time to read the bill, let alone assess it.  Because you should never let a good crisis go to waste, hey?

Moe Lane

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Shedding the Democrat-imposed and Republican-aided stereotype that they are the “Party of No” — no ideas, no cooperation, and no legislative alternatives — four Republicans today submitted a legislative alternative to the Democratic party’s federal government-centric health care “reform” proposals.

This morning, Senators Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and and Richard Burr (R-NC) and Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) announced their “Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” an attempt to “achieve universal access to quality, affordable health care without bankrupting our children with trillions more in debt or imposing draconian tax hikes on all Americans,” according to a release from the four Republicans, who added:

“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor; using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs; and ensuring universal, affordable health care for all Americans.

“The Patients’ Choice Act” promotes innovative, State-based solutions, along with fundamental reforms in the tax code, to give every American, regardless of employment status, age, or health condition, the ability and the resources to purchase health insurance. The comprehensive legislation includes concrete prevention and transparency initiatives, long overdue reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, investments in wellness programs and health IT, and more.

Let’s take a closer look at the bill below the fold.

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Thanks to my chairmanship of the Executive Roundtable for the Republican Governor’s Association, I have had the privilege of knowing some of the party’s most influential leaders. This, plus concerns on the current Administration’s direction (think assault on free enterprise and march toward socialism) have led me to some early thoughts on who might both lead our party back and who might be our nominee in 2012.

So, for better, or for worse, based on my personal experiences, here are my top ten who are leading the debate today, some of whom we should be looking to for 2012. Given that I believe the solutions to most of our country’s problems aren’t found in Washington, you will find few on my list who serve in Congress.

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In the process of reading “Centrist Dems: Dogged If They Do, Dogged If They Don’t” by Froma Harrop (short version: pity the poor Blue Dog Democrats; the Left wants them to fall into line behind the progressives and the Right wants them to actually act as if fiscal conservatism meant something), I noticed this particular passage.

And Blue Dogs hold undisguised contempt for recent Republican conversions to fiscal rectitude. [Rep. Paul] Ryan’s appeal “to help us defeat this unprecedented taxing, borrowing and spending spree” drew a tart response from Louisiana Rep. Charlie Melancon.

“These statements come from the same individuals who wrote the president a blank check for eight years, driving spending to the highest levels in our country’s history,” said Melancon, a co-chair of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition.

It struck me as an… odd reaction.

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Just hours after the House Democratic leadership forced President Obama’s $3,600,000,000,000.00 budget for fiscal year 2010 through the House Budget Committee, the House GOP unveiled their alternative to the president’s astronomical spending bill (the GOP document can be seen here, courtesy of good friend and RS contributor Dan Spencer).

President Obama has pulled out all the stops in pushing his multi-trillion-dollar budget, which even USA Today has called “unprecedented in size [and] breathtaking in scope.” He has returned to campaign mode, mobilizing as much of his Obama/Organizing for America volunteer force as possible (a number which, it turns out, is significantly lower than that which was willing to help him get elected in the first place) and sending them door-to-door to evangelize for a document they haven’t read (and which will saddle them, their children, and their grandchildren with ridiculous amounts of debt). He has called for public input and participation in a TeleTownHall held today.

And, last night, in a move reminiscent of his actions during the actual campaign, Obama threw down the figurative gauntlet to detractors from his $3,600,000,000,000.00 spending plan, saying “To a bunch of the critics out there, I’ve already said, show me your budget! I’m happy to have that debate.”

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Congressman Paul Ryan, the senior Republican on the House Budget Committe, today laid out the problems with the House Democrat Budget Resolution:

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), ranking member on the House Budget Committee, has done the American people a great service as the debate commences on President Barack Obama’s budget. We’ve all heard the argument from congressional Republicans: “It spends too much, borrows too much and taxes too much.” Put those words next to pictures and you begin to realize their significance.

The following 11 slides should be a staple of conservative efforts to counter Obama’s budget. As you can see, 95% of Americans will not get a tax cut. Families will actually have a net tax increase of $800 after they pay for Obama’s cap-and-trade program. But perhaps the most dramatic chart from Ryan is the depiction showing the doubling of the national debt and the pace at which it increases compared to President Bush’s tenure.

This weekend when Obama’s troops mobilize by going door-to-door in support of his budget proposal, make sure you’re armed with this set of charts to rebut their rhetoric.