__ This graphic was the initial reaction from Erick ‘Infinite’ Erickson at Redstate: If it is Ryan, I’ll be quite happy. His departure from Congress would improve both Congress and the Romney campaign. It would improve Congress because too many people tend to lionize him when his record has some flaws. His presence often drowns …
More on the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver and His New Chief EnablerPost + Comments (106)
…[G]et him out of his comfort zone of being thought an intellectual by the likes of Louie Gohmert, and of being thought of as a bold thinker by half the buffet-grazers in the Beltway media, and he really is quite the political coward. (In this way, he is a perfect match for the man who picked him.) He does not have the raw balls to explain to the country that, no, he does not believe in government — not the federal government, anyway, and not as it was originally conceived, as the fundamental expression of a political commonwealth. He’s grandfathered his plan to chloroform Medicare so that, despite the deficit that he considers such an urgent problem, nobody alive today who might vote against him will be affected by it. For the same reason, he will not specify the cuts that he will make or the tax “loopholes” —coughMortgageInterestDeductioncough — that he will close. In any way that will come to matter to the people whose lives his policies will make harder and more miserable, Paul Ryan is still the high-school kid living off Social Security survivor benefits and reading Ayn Rand by flashlight under the sheets…
Doghouse Riley, “Rich Guy Picks Rich Guy Toady As Assistant“:
… And what a perfect summation of the last thirty years of “conservatism” this is: the über-rich white guy who thinks he should be President because he understands the needs of über-rich white guys, and the forty-something Randoid posterboy for mendacity. The CEO and the chief ad exec…
But, assuming there’s some reason other than under-the-table payoffs that made anyone feel good about the Republican party as of yesterday morning, how do you look at this stinkbomb and convince yourself that everything’s all right? A bottle of The Macallan 25 and your financial report? Your party is not in possession of Facts, an Argument, or its Senses. And that’s its sensible wing. You might win elections–you fucking might win this one, which should scare you, too–but you can’t govern. Thirty-two years ago, eight election cycles (which is enough for even “conservatives” to have begun coming to their senses), you got the opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of government. Today you’re just the fucking monkey wrench. Tax Cuts, Because I’d Really Rather Not Pay Taxes. You’ve gone from unsustainable to incomprehensible.
You’re the party of fucking lapel flags (as opposed to the Democrats, the party afraid to not wear lapel flags). You’re the party of facile gestures which in fact put the lie to your principles, and you don’t care because your principles are just there to distract people from your lying about them.
Okay, so full disclosure: I found you incomprehensible (and reprehensible) in 1980, but at least you didn’t double down every time you hit a roadblock. A lot of people said you lost your way with the collapse of the International Communist Conspiracy (though, of course, you had to’ve lost your way just to be found there). But I’d propose that in fact you’ve never recovered from Iran/Contra and the Great S&L Swindle; like Vietnam and Civil Rights, you patched it up with disinformation. And got away with it, to the extent that you won elections, but you lost your minds. And your souls, if any. Which brings us to Romney/Ryan, 2012. This Is What “Opportunity” Really Looks Like.™