Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, enthused Republican supporters in Waukesha County during his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech at the GOP National Convention in Tampa on Wednesday.

With plenty of cheers for the hometown candidate, Waukesha County Republicans feel that Ryan, coupled with presidential candidate Mitt Romney, can make a difference in the 2012 elections.

Ryan’s speech gave voters the chance to compare the two directions the country is headed — one supporting on a government-reliant society and the other giving Americans the freedom to do what they want in order to succeed, said State Rep. Paul Farrow, who has announced he is seeking former State Sen. Rich Zipperer’s seat.

“I thought he did a perfect job getting that point across,” Farrow said.

With Romney’s pick of Ryan as the vice presidential running mate, Wisconsin could flip Republican after supporting Democract Barack Obama in 2004.

“I think he is putting us back on the map,” Farrow said about Ryan.

Keith Best, public relations chairman for the Republican Party of Waukesha County, was also pleased with Ryan’s speech. The area Republicans were watching the speech during a special party at the GOP headquarters on Pearl Street Wednesday night.

“He knocked it out of the park,” Best said. “Mitt Romney proved he picked Paul Ryan at the right time.”

Chris Maurer said he’s looking forward to a debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Ryan. Maurer predicted Biden will fill the debate with rhetoric and empty words while Ryan will speak like he did Wednesday night.

“We just saw what a real leader looks like,” Maurer said.

But not everyone was happy with the speech. One Wisconsin Now director Scot Ross in a prepared news release said Ryan did not “at long last apologize for his complicity in sending so many members of his fellow generations off to die and be injured in the Iraq War.”

“At no point did Paul Ryan publicly question the war, the litany of lies upon which it was based and the sacrifice it would require of so many soldiers and their families,” Ross said. “Paul Ryan had eight years to act. Yet every single day, Paul Ryan put fealty to his political party above his responsibility to his fellow young men and women.

“Paul Ryan’s stunning refusal to address this in his speech to the nation is a stinging punctuation mark to the failure and deception of the misguided war that cost so many in Generation X and Y their lives in service to this nation.”