Paul Ryan, the media darling, is getting a lot of mileage out of a simple phrase he used in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in Ocrober: "All Americans have the right to rise."
Republicans have begun to trumpet the phrase, since Jeb Bush, in an op ed in the Wall Street Journal, credited Ryan as the author, expanded on and twisted the idea. <> First off, Ryan didn't coin the phrase, although no one seems to be disputing the claim that he did.
I knew I'd heard it before; it had a familiar ring. Was it Jesse Jackson who said it? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
The answer was much closer to home. Milwaukee's George Watts, a moderate Republican businessman (pictured campaigning for mayor in 2000) who supported the civil rights movement, titled his autobiography, "Insurrection in Milwaukee: The Right to Rise." Watts died in 2005.
Watts might be pleased that he's being quoted, although he'd probably prefer to have it attributed. But he would undoubtedly be appalled by the way "the right to rise" is being twisted as an argument to deregulate those at the top, when he was trying to help those at the bottom. More at The Paul Ryan Watch.