It’s all over the airwaves and internet now that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to be his vice presidential running mate. I think Ryan is a good choice, a solid choice…but not the best choice Romney could have made. While Ryan is one of the best people in Washington right now, he will bring little to the table to energize the conservative base of the GOP. Yes, he is fiscally conservative, but he is not known as a great defender of social conservatism. And without the energy and commitment of social conservatives, any Republican’s hopes for the White House are doomed.

Recently, I attended a meeting at which representatives of 60 Plus warned how the “Obamacare” health reform law will hurt senior citizens all around America. They explained that $500 billion was cut from Medicare to spend on other things that don’t benefit senior citizens, as well as informed about the new tax on medical devices that senior citizens and handicapped people usually buy, and that the new medical device tax will cause almost 25,000 people to lose jobs at medical device manufacturers throughout America.

AUGUST 11, 1984, by an 88-11 Senate vote and a 337-77 House vote, Congress passed the Equal Access Act. Regarding this, President Reagan commented August 23, 1984 at Reunion Arena, Dallas, Texas: “We even had to pass a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to school rooms after classes that a Young Marxist Society…would already enjoy.”

Somehow we’ve come to accept, regarding government policy, that there are separate “economic” issues and “social” issues, the former being issues having to do with our pocketbook and the latter being issues touching religious values and behavior. But this is a mistake. The economy is also a social “values” issue. It’s about the extent to which we respect private property and it’s protected from politicians. Respect for private property is disdained in socialist countries. Respecting the sanctity of private property reflects our values as much as does our respect for the sanctity of life and marriage.