Clouds didn’t intimidate vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Wednesday. Organizers were ready to hand out rain ponchos if the skies opened up, but the weather cooperated for Ryan’s latest stump speech.

The Republican congressman from Wisconsin, who presidential hopeful Mitt Romney picked as a political best friend, spoke to hundreds of delighted Republicans at America the Beautiful Park at dusk. He talked for nearly half an hour about President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy, the federal budget, foreign policy and more.

Many attendees were keenly interestedin Ryan’s positions on looming Defense Department budget cuts, which, according to Republican estimates, could cost southern Colorado up to 18,000 jobs next year.

“When we gut our military, as the president is proposing, when we equivocate on speaking up for our values overseas… when we do this, we project weakness abroad. And when we project weakness abroad, our enemies are more likely to test us,” Ryan told the crowd.

Addressing veterans and troops he said, “We respect you, we appreciate you, and we will back you. Because we need you.”

Ryan pledged that no cuts would be made to the military under a Romney administration.

The veep candidate expounded on Romney’s virtues, and tied him to economic recovery. Romney, he said, has a proven record as the former governor of Massachusetts. Not only did he work with Democrats on health care reform, but he also presided over a huge boost in the state’s economy and helped Massachusetts’ government manage its finances.

“He balanced the budget without raising taxes. That’s the kind of leadership we need right now,” Ryan said.

Jacob Dwire, a 24-year-old receptionist, said he’s almost certainly going to enlist in the Air Force, and that now he’s worried about the projected defense cuts. So Romney and Ryan are more appealing.

“These cuts are going to make it hard for people to join up,” Dwire said.

Nursing student Ann Reyes said she liked “absolutely everything” about Ryan’s speech. When a friend of hers said that a person without a business background shouldn’t be president, Reyes nodded in agreement.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said earlier in the day that Ryan’s budget proposals were “ideological” and “extreme.”

Bennet argued that Romney’s and Ryan’s plan would cut benefits to veterans by 20 percent, and that both candidates are “out of touch with Coloradans, whether it’s Democrats, Republicans or independents.”

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John Schroyer

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Republican vice president nominee Paul Ryan speaks during a rally Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012, at America the Beautiful Park in Colorado Springs. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK/The Gazette

Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, The Gazette