Gary Weiss, The Street: Ryan's Skeleton in the Closet (calls Ryan a LIAR for denying Rand influence)

[highplainsdem]

If you're not familiar with Gary Weiss, this is the Wikipedia article on his background as an investigative journalist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Weiss

and a link to his site, featuring his newest book, Ayn Rand Nation:

http://www.gary-weiss.com/


From his column today at TheStreet.com, "Paul Ryan's Skeleton in the Closet":

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11661708/1/paul-ryans-skeleton-in-the-closet.html

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Paul Ryan is either a chameleon, a flip-flopper or a liar. There is no third alternative. I vote "liar."

I'm really staggered by the media's softball handling of what is going to become known in the waning months of this campaign as Mitt Romney's Ayn Rand Problem.

For years, his newly minted running mate has championed Rand, a Russian-born author chiefly known for her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. In those books and in essays, speeches and interviews, Rand celebrated greed and selfishness, rejected Judeo-Christian morality, and set forth an alien vision of a nearly government-free America that would be ruled by its industrialists and bankers -- an untaxed super-rich elite. She was a strident atheist.

Then, in April, Ryan had an apparent change of heart. He gave an interview to the National Review in which he disavowed Rand entirely. Ryan said that, yes, like a lot of people he'd read Rand as a youth, but he certainly was not an adherent to her philosophy.

-snip-

This is a blistering critique of Ryan's dishonesty, focusing on Ryan's 2005 speech to the Atlas Society. Weiss links to an audo file of the speech, which he says you need to listen to in its entirety "to understand the full depths of Ryan's dishonesty."

[reformist2]

1. I would love it if that freak Ayn Rand and her disciples were finally held up to national scrutiny.

It would shock Dems, independents - and many Repugs, too.

[highplainsdem]

2. I agree completely.

[B2G]

3. How many average voters have read Ayn Rand or know who she is?

Seriously...this is a go nowhere line of attack. We need to focus on Medicare.

[reformist2]

4. It should not be the main argument of Dems, but the Ayn Rand wackos have to be smoked out eventually

[highplainsdem]

5. Ryan's attempt to distance himself from Rand now shows he realizes how vulnerable he is on this.

He's aware that her ideas look too extreme and crazy outside right-wing circles.

Obviously this shouldn't be the main line of attack for Dems, but it's an important one.

The GOP is trying to tout Ryan as their leading intellectual. That makes his intellectual influences extremely important, and fair game.