Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) gets a little Hot Air love…

…which sounds a lot dirtier than I thought it would when I started writing it.

As noted earlier in this space, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) took part in today’s big happy health care “summit.” Ed Morrissey was impressed:

For those who thought today’s summit was a carefully-laid trap for Republicans set by Barack Obama, let me ask this: How many networks would have carried the following argument by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) had he made it on the steps of the Capitol? It likely wouldn’t have been aired even in passing on the talking-head -cable network shows. Instead, with multiple networks covering the proceedings, Ryan laid out the conservative argument and laid bare the central conceit of the Democratic efforts on reform, which is that one set of standards fits all.

He posts some video:

I still think the central (political) weakness of the conservative argument is: we don’t write checks to solve people’s problems. The central weakness of the liberal argument is: no matter how many checks they write, there are always more problems. And, in fact, the more checks they write, the more checks they’ll need to write: because of the “me, too” syndrome, and because of the drag their check-writing places on the economy.

Not to mention: even under the liberal way, people have unmet needs. But under the liberal way, those people’s only recourse is to wait for the check.

People have unmet needs under the conservative way, too. But under the conservative way, their options are much, much wider.

UPDATE - Linked by Obi’s Sister. Thanks Ginny.

UPDATE II - Huge “summit” roundup over at The Daley Gator.