Krugman: Putting Even More Con in Conservative (updated)

[ProSense]

Last edited Mon Apr 30, 2012, 09:28 AM - Edit history (1)

Putting Even More Con in Conservative

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece on Paul Ryan, which shows not just that he’s a fake deficit hawk now, but that he always was — he was an enthusiastic supporter of all of Bush’s budget-busters, spending as well as taxes.

Yet, as Chait also says, Ryan is still — still — beloved by “centrists”, who get very annoyed when someone (i.e., me) points out the fraudulence. How can this be?

Chait’s main answer is that reporters don’t know policy, so they’re easily taken in by image. But I don’t buy that. For one thing, they do generally love the “gotcha” style of journalism — you say A, but you used to say B — and as Chait has just demonstrated, you can have a field day doing that on Ryan.

Also, what about the Very Serious deficit-hawk groups that gave Ryan an award for fiscal responsibility? They can crunch numbers; they can surely see as clearly as I can that Ryan’s plans are fake, that when you strip out the implausible and unspecified they amount to a deficit-increasing plan to take from the poor and give to the rich.

The real story here isn’t so much about Ryan as it is about the fundamental unseriousness of the Very Serious, who are in their own way just as much about striking a pose unrelated to their real actions as Ryan himself.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/putting-even-more-con-in-conservative/

Updated to add:

<...>

Outside of Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Ryan may be the party’s most important figure, said William Bennett, the conservative luminary and a mentor of Mr. Ryan’s going back to the congressman’s early 20s.

Some conservatives say Mr. Bennett might have the reality reversed. “Paul Ryan effectively captured the Republican presidential candidates,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the House Republican leadership, said admiringly.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/us/politics/paul-ryans-kinetic-rise-in-gop.html?_r=1&ref=politics

It's the Romney-Ryan plan.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Here's a link to Chait's article:

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/paul-ryan-2012-5/

It makes Ryan look more two-faced than Romney.

[gratuitous]

2. Whether reporters know policy or not, Ryan's getting a pass

As Krugman points out, Ryan's record is just shot full of holes, readily available to anyone who cares to glance around. Ryan's policies are also ruinous and economically unsound, not just in terms of economics, but on their own terms. And yet he continues to receive the royal treatment, his cuckoo pronouncements treated as oracles. There's got to be a reason for this.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

3. There is a reason for this . . .

The media is all owned by a few huge corprat entities that stand to profit handsomely from policies like Ryan's.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1406