(Jim Morin via GoComics.com)
__
As ever, Mr. Charles P. Pierce gets to the rotten core of the RNC’s new blue-eyed boy:
TAMPA, Fla. — I think it was when he went to tears, one dab at each eye, while talking about his mother, that it became extraordinarily clear to me that there’s a lot of old Dick Nixon in young Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Janesville, Wisconsin. It was always floating around the edges of my perception as I listened to his well-crafted, competently delivered, and virtually substance-free acceptance speech on Wednesday night. There was the crass connection to “the working men and women,” like himself. The way his voice drops and his eyes glow when he starts talking about the America in which he grew up, where he flipped burgers and washed floors and dreamed very big dreams. There is the obvious effort to… connect, a gift for a simulacrum of empathy that is just inches away from actual sincerity, but which sells on the screen like someone who truly cares about you, his fellow struggling Americans. But it wasn’t until he started tearing up that it all came together for me.
The difference, of course, is that Nixon was deeply, authentically marked by deep and authentic poverty and deprivation. He came by his ultimately self-destructive neuroses honestly. He earned every wound that he imagined the smart people of the world — the Jews, those damn Kennedys — had inflicted on him. He actually worked a job outside of government, and outside the Washington universe of government-dependent think tanks. He once actually had to earn a living. Paul Ryan hasn’t lacked for a job since he left college as the golden child of Wisconsin Republican politics, riding his family connections into a job with then-Senator Bob Kasten….
It was a good, solid debut for Ryan, who benefitted tremendously from a hall that had gone rapturous over an earlier speech by Condoleezza Rice, whose career as a studious non-politician came to a definitive end last night. (I say this in all sincerity: The woman has the finest diction of any public speaker I have heard anywhere. She may have been the last college student ever who paid attention in Public Speaking class.) Condi even had the considerable cheek to mention 9/11, the greatest national-security failure a national-security adviser ever had, right off the top. The house loved her, though, and she completely energized what had been a weird, disjointed ragbag of an evening full of speeches that went from an Old-Timer’s Game — John McCain, Mike Huckabee — to a speechifying contest among the entire roster of vice-presidential runners-up. John Thune and Rob Portman showed why they didn’t get the gig, and Tim Pawlenty told some really bad jokes and did everything but leave his resume on the podium for Willard Romney to pick up later. But it was Rice who put the charge in the place and gave Ryan something on which to build. Which he did, even though his performance was interrupted early on by protestors holding a banner reading, “Vagina: Can’t Say It, Don’t Legislate It.” And shouting, “Health care, not warfare,” and “My body, my choice.” Frankly, it was about time somebody in the hall mentioned abortion…
More to the point, during the whole time Paul Ryan was on his own path, his own journey, the American journey where he could think for himself, decide for himself, and define happiness for himself, every rough road was made smooth by his reliance on Social Security survivor’s benefits that came to his family upon the death of his father. At least Chris Christie had the self-awareness to mention the G.I. Bill on Tuesday night, when he was talking about his father. The assistance that young Paul Ryan got from “the central planners” as he rose from Janesville, through Miami of Ohio, and to a career in which he never has had a job that wasn’t inside, or very close to, the national government was not even acknowledged. He knows, in his Randian soul, that he once was a moocher, that in many ways he remains a moocher, and perhaps it galls him just a bit. It eats at him, the way Richard Nixon’s childhood poverty was wormwood in his soul. That’s where the connection lies. Paul Ryan is the newest new Nixon and, don’t kid yourselves: He’s a lot better at it than the old one was.
By this point, I’m beginning to suspect that tonight’s Big!… Mystery!… Guest! is gonna be Dick Cheney, who will shoot Trump’s ‘Obama impersonator’ in the face, to vast applause from the delegates.
Both Sides Do It
If anything good comes out of Ryan’s legitimate rape of the public discourse it’s that it has allowed Pierce to firmly establish himself as one of the best pundits in America.
He got Ryan completely right, the first time, and goes for the jugular, every time.
AA+ Bonds
No idea why people watch these things; if you want the gist, there’s decades worth of documentaries on Klan rallies out there. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.
AA+ Bonds
Just kidding, folks!
Here’s my favorite highlight reel from the Republican National Convention so far.
madmommy
The only positive benefit of this damn hurricane/tropical storm is that it has kept me from watching the convention. I would not have been able to look away, even as my blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels. I haven’t slept in 2 days, my boys are stir crazy, and the dogs are wet and smelly. But somehow, amazingly, we never lost power and in spite of heavy flooding all around me the water does not seem any closer than it was last night. I am hoping that the rain will stop, someday.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@madmommy:
I’ve been totally out of the news loop all week but that brings it home. So sorry that you and your family are going through these hard times with the weather. Reminds me I should check in on my niece in NO and see if she’s doing OK.
Davis X. Machina
This speech, this convention, from the people people who want to run the country where ‘marketing’ first took its place besides philosophy and history and physics and economics as a university-level discipline, and we’re surprised?
Glengarry/Glenross 2012. Democracy is for closers.
JPL
@madmommy: Even though the storm is weakening, it doesn’t appear to be moving much. I do hope that your power stays on and your home stays dry.
madmommy
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Compared to what is going on all around in my little town we have been incredibly lucky. An old berm/levee failed in a neighborhood a few miles from me and dumped 10+ feet of water in a very short time. The town center, which is right on the river is under water. The big kid’s school is within sight of the river, and I haven’t been able to find out anything about that yet. This has been the craziest thing-our power goes out at the drop of a hat, and yet except for a few blinks is still on. Our yard usually fills up in a heavy rain, but this time it hasn’t. Just got a text from hubby and he is going to try to make it home at 6 after being at work since Monday. He’s classed as a first responder, but has been in the EOC building doing dispatch instead of having to be out in this mess.
hep kitty
(huffpo)
Kane
Ryan and the rest of the Randian cult never consider themselves moochers. They justify their acceptance of assistance by detesting it. The moochers, according to them, are those other people who seek assistance and who don’t detest it as much as them.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Kane:
Denial is the cornerstone of the modern GOP. They never see government assistance that they personally benefit from. It’s invisible.
Schlemizel
I’d disagree with one bit. Ryan does not see himself as a moocher, he thinks he earns his money unlike all those other government employees who really are moochers as far as he can tell. Unlike a lot of the snake oil GOP Ryan is a true believer.
I don’t know what causes this sort of delusion. You often see it in people like Willard who came by their wealth genetically then claim the earned it (what, your sperm cell swam harder than all those that didn’t make it?) It certainly is also common amongst the teabaggers “I paid taxes I deserve the stuff I get from the government, not like those other people getting stuff!”
Both Sides Do It
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s kind of funny, because when I listen to the media reaction to the speech I keep hearing a Ricky Roma rant run through my head:
“Your job is to help us. To HELP us! Not to: FUCK. US. UP. To help men who are going out there to try to earn a living.”
madmommy
I tried to watch a clip of Ryan’s speech this morning but gave up after a minute or so. What a smarmy little toady he is! How anyone can be taken in by his snake oil is simply beyond me. He’s got the zeal of a true believer coupled with the persona of that brown nosed kid everyone picked on in school. Not an attractive combination.
amk
WaPo’s editorial board also too lights into pos twerp ryan’s
speechlies.Is the msm finally lurning? Sure hope so. I don’t see how the media can get the thugs get away with such blatant lies to the voters any more.
kd bart
This exchange on CNN following Ryan’s speech basically sums up the total uselessness of Wolf Blitzer and the crew over at CNN:
Blitzer: So there he is, the republican vice presidential nominee and his beautiful family there. His mom is up there. This is exactly what this crowd of republicans here certainly republicans all across the country were hoping for. He delivered a powerful speech. Erin, a powerful speech. Although I marked seven or eight points I’m sure the fact checkers will have some opportunities to dispute if they want to go forward, I’m sure they will. As far as mitt romney’s campaign is concerned, paul ryan on this night delivered.
Burnett: That’s right. Certainly so. We were jotting down points. There will be issues with some of the facts. But it motivated people. He’s a man who says I care deeply about every single word. I want to do a good job. And he delivered on that. Precise, clear, and passionate.
Dr. Dave
@amk: The reporter on NPR’s Morning Edition also picked out some choice examples of Ryan’s mendacity, including demagoguing the Bowles-Simpson recommendations (which Ryan voted against) and trying to blame Obama for a Wisconsin auto plant that closed in 2008, so I have some hope that the truth will out.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
OTOH, listening to Moira Liarson on Totebagger Radio yesterday afternoon as she described Romney as “sincere”, “likeable”, etc., etc., I had to ask myself “what universe do you live on?” even by her craptacular standards of pushing every Repup talking point during any given report.
Gypsy howell
I have to figure that The people at the convention are hard core political junkies, even more than I am. (they’re actually delegates, I’m just sitting at home in front of my computer)
. They know Ryan’s record just as well as we do, maybe even better. They know he voted for all the Bush debt bombs, they know he tanked Bowles Simpson (the only thing I can applaud, for completely different reasons of course) they know what in the Ryan plan, they know he wants to dismantle Medicare.
We arent looking at a bunch of misinformed low information voters. They KNOW he was spouting lies. And yet there they are, applauding and cheering it.
I’m stunned. Sickened and stunned.
Paul
@Gypsy howell:
I watched the Daily Show last night. He had a segment where he showed the audience with their stupid “We built it” signs. Are the Republican delegates truly this astonishingly stupid or worse, are they that willingly to go along with this lie (Obama’s words completely taken out of context)?
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul:
Go with the “worse” option. They don’t care if it’s true.
Suffern ACE
@kd bart: It’s almost as if Ryan hadn’t said anything at all.
bemused
A quote from John Kenneth Galbraith neatly sums up the lying, vicious, motley crew of today’s Republicans/Conservatives:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”.
A conservative who is a far right religious ideologue or an Ayn Rand fanatic or a deficit hawk or a filthy rich job creator or a flag waving, small government liberty lover, etc all share the single motivation of utter greed.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Paul:
Yes.
Next question!
In all seriousness, of course they are. These are scared white folks whose underlying bigotry regarding that colored fella in the White House eats at practically everything they do. Oh, and 30+ years now of dismantling the New Deal.
Linda Featheringill
@madmommy:
Take care. Hope your good fortune continues.
MattF
I do get the feeling that Ryan’s aura is getting chipped, and that there’s something stinky below the surface– so that evokes Nixon. But Ryan’d have to be a lot smarter and a lot harder working than he’s been so far before being compared seriously with TrickyDicky.
Kane
It feels as if there have been more examples in the past 48 hours of the media calling out the Romney campaign for lying then there has been in the entire campaign.
So what was the tipping point? Why now? Was there a single event or one lie too far or was it the Lie-palooza in Tampa that made the lying so glaringly obvious that the msm had to speak out now or lose whatever shred of cred they have left?
Kirbster
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. The first time I saw Paul Ryan was when he and Cantor were acting like smarmy little assholes at President Obama’s “Healthcare Summit” back in 2010. “What a smarmy, insufferable little asshole. I’ll bet he was a College Republican or a YAFfer,” I thought. My opinion of the man has only gotten lower since then.
MattF
@Kane: I think the Romney campaign actually telling the fact-checkers to go perform an unmentionable act on a nearby orifice has something to do with it.
Ash Can
I didn’t watch the speech, I didn’t watch the Very Serious Bobbleheads expounding afterwards, I didn’t read the post-mortems in the news this morning. But from the comments here, I’m getting the sense of a pattern emerging, and let’s face it — even mentioning that Ryan played fast and loose with the facts is a step up for these sycophants, hangers-on, and wannabes. Even if they’re doing it in their knee-jerk “some say” way, reflexively seeking to manufacture controversy out of everything they report, they’re still going there, because it’s so obvious that even the laziest newsie can latch onto it. On the one hand, yeah, dreamy blue eyes, everyone cheering, blah blah. What’s on the other hand? Lies so blatant that they’re what come to mind first for all those brain-dead reporters who are just phoning it in. Even the LA Times bootlicker whose account was published in this morning’s ChiTrib (OK, I did read one account) mentioned that Ryan had actually supported one of the programs he had trashed Obama on.
Don’t get me wrong; we still have light years to go before we have a functioning press in this nation, and we may never have one again at all. But I do think this is progress of sorts; it remains only to be seen whether it continues, and the newsies keep mentioning the lies as the campaign continues.
Kane
@MattF: I think you’re right. I asked the same question elsewhere, and the consensus is that the welfare ad along with the gauntlet-dropping statement about fact-checkers.
The Republic of Stupidity
Mebbe they’ll dig up Reagan’s corpse, strap it to a hand truck, roll it out on stage, and prop it up behind a microphone…
Either way – Cheney or Reagan – it’ll be a dead man talking…
Anoniminous
@Kane:
The major media companies are losing money and market share in their consumer markets, e.g., newspaper readership is in a steady, decade long decline. Advertisers are getting better measurements of the demographics of actual audiences for broadcast media and are forcing ad-rates downwards.
I think the turn towards Truthiness is the MSM discovered they lost their cred a long time ago and nobody is buying, i.e., paying hard coin, for their bullshit.
SFAW
@kd bart:
You leave Wolf Blitzer ALOOOOONE! How dare you disrespect an intellectual giant such as he!
Witness his brilliance:
youtube.com/watch?v=mD5lbUwpbC8
General comment:
As far as Condi Rice goes: cut her some slack, will you? You act as if it was her fault that no one coordinated intelligence between the CIA, FBI, and so forth. It’s Clinton’s fault that there was no one to fill that role. After all, if he had been paying attention, he wouldn’t have eliminated the National Security Advisor position, and SOMEONE in that role would maybe have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
You damn Lieberals with your hatred of Successful, Unangry Black Women, ya make me sick.
Kent
Mystery guest?
My money’s on Mel Gibson. He most perfectly captures the drunken incoherent violent racist misogynistic Id of today’s Republican party.
But he will talk through a hand puppet!
Smiling Mortician
@Paul: Both, of course. They’re maxing out both axes on the Stupid/Evil matrix. Evil enough to push the out-of-context quote knowingly, stupid enough to be standing in a taxpayer-funded arena screaming about how they built it.
Smiling Mortician
@Paul: Both, of course. They’re maxing out both axes on the Stupid/Evil matrix. Evil enough to push the out-of-context quote knowingly, stupid enough to be standing in a taxpayer-funded arena screaming about how they built it.
Smiling Mortician
@Paul: Both, of course. They’re maxing out both axes on the Stupid/Evil matrix. Evil enough to push the out-of-context quote knowingly, stupid enough to be standing in a taxpayer-funded arena screaming about how they built it.
Smiling Mortician
My first FYWP ever. This calls for a doughnut.
Smiling Mortician
My first FYWP ever. This calls for a doughnut.
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen.
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen.
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen.
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen.
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen
Ben Franklin
@Smiling Mortician:
Heh. I raise you a baker’s dozen
FDRLincoln
Paul Ryan doesn’t hold a candle to Richard Nixon.
Nixon was paranoid, amoral, power-mad, and bigoted. He was also highly intelligent, pragmatic, and (it pains me to admit this) he really did care somewhat about the country, not just his own pocketbook.
Ryan has all of Nixon’s bad qualities but without any of his good ones.
FDRLincoln
And God help me, Ronald Freaking Reagan was better than any of the GOP leaders today. I hated Reagan and his legacy is responsible for so much of what ails us today. He was an awful person and a poor president in many ways.
But he also bucked his neo-con advisors and negotiated with Gorbachev to lower the risk of nuclear war. He negotiated in good faith with the Democrats on some occasions. He raised taxes when necessary.
He was a terrible person and a poor president, and he is STILL better than the maniacs running the GOP today.
shortstop
It’s extremely frightening to me that we’ve reached a point at which objective facts simply don’t matter in public discourse. It’s nice that the pundits are grumbling a bit today, but Romney and Ryan will not pay the price in votes for this. Their campaign pollster is right: they don’t in fact have to be constrained by fact checkers, because tribalism’s trumping of reality is complete.
Obama isn’t going to lose this election. But the markers for the future are dire.
Julie
The front page of Yahoo! is calling the lies in Ryan’s speech ‘factual shortcuts’ but… progress?
redshirt
@shortstop: Conservatives are the greatest Post Modernists the world has ever seen. They’re like evil French philosophers. With guns. Lots of guns.
MattF
@redshirt: Actually, the question at issue precedes Derrida et. al.:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_18:38
firebrand
The mystery guest appears to be Clint Eastwood. Depressing.
Thoughtcrime
@The Republic of Stupidity:
The obvious and perfect mystery guest is a combination of Romney/Ryan: youtube.com/watch?v=s46jNfA9iMw
Kay
Erin Burnett may be the most embarrassing GOP cheerleader yet.
I see a lucrative future for her selling rip-off financial instruments to vulnerable old people when Romney-Ryan privatize Social Security.
NeoOstrakon
Newsmax says it’s going to be Clint Eastwood.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Gypsy howell: You summed up my reaction to the speech in particular and the convention as a whole better than I ever could. Thanks.