“Conservative intellectuals” are very sad that Paul Ryan isn’t running for president:
The 41-year-old House Budget Committee chairman wasn’t just the right’s beau ideal because he authored the “Roadmap,” the controversial entitlement and spending reform plan — it’s also because his political roots are in the think tank world. Ryan worked for Jack Kemp and William Bennett at Empower America as a 20-something and even now he’s closer to conservative thinkers than he is to the typical GOP lobbyists and strategists that surround ambitious pols.
“They made Paul Ryan into a heartthrob,” said National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru of his fellow right-leaning thinkers.
And he seemed a man for a wonky moment.
“It’s in some ways [the current field is] less satisfying because this is a particularly policy-heavy moment and the most wonky of the wonky issues are front and center,” said Yuval Levin, the Hertog Fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “We feel the absence of policy intellectuals more.”
I feel very relieved that there aren’t any “conservative intellectuals” running for president. “Conservative intellectuals” dreamed up supply-side economics and neoconservatism and vouchercare. They held a dim-witted frat boy on a tight leash from 2001-2005, but praise-be-to-Bieber, they weren’t able to talk him into invading Iran during his second term. As bad as things were under Bush, they would have been that much worse under a president Bolton or Wolfowitz.
Michele Bachmann didn’t scare me that much until she started talking about von Mises.