Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan captured the G.O.P.
from the New Yorker:
Fussbudget
How Paul Ryan captured the G.O.P.
by Ryan Lizza August 6, 2012
One day in March, 2009, two months after the Inauguration of President Obama, Representative Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin, sat behind a small table in a cramped meeting space in his Capitol Hill office. Hunched forward in his chair, he rattled off well-rehearsed critiques of the new Presidents policies and Americas lurch toward a European style of government. Ryans father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all died before their sixtieth birthdays, so Ryan, who is now forty-two, could be forgiven if he seemed like a man in a hurry. Tall and wiry, with a puff of wavy dark hair, he is nearly as well known in Washington for his punishing early-morning workouts as he is for his mastery of the federal budget. Asked to explain his opposition to Obamas newly released budget, he replied, I dont have that much time.
Ryan won his seat in 1998, at the age of twenty-eight. Like many young conservatives, he is embarrassed by the Bush years. At the time, as a junior member with little clout, Ryan was a reliable Republican vote for policies that were key in causing enormous federal budget deficits: sweeping tax cuts, a costly prescription-drug entitlement for Medicare, two wars, the multibillion-dollar bank-bailout legislation known as TARP. In all, five trillion dollars was added to the national debt. In 2006 and 2008, many of Ryans older Republican colleagues were thrown out of office as a result of lobbying scandals and overspending. Ryan told me recently that, as a fiscal conservative, he was miserable during the last majority and is determined to do everything I can to make sure I dont feel that misery again.
In 2009, Ryan was striving to reintroduce himself as someone true to his ideological roots and capable of reversing his partys reputation for fiscal profligacy. A generation of Republican leaders was gone. Ryan had already jumped ahead of more senior colleagues to become the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, and it was his job to pick apart Obamas tax and spending plans. At the table in his office, Ryan pointed out the gimmicks that Presidents use to hide costs and conceal policy details. He deconstructed Obamas early health-care proposal and attacked his climate-change plan. Obamas budget makes our tax code much less competitive, he said, as if reading from a script. It makes it harder for businesses to survive in the global economy, for people to save for their own retirement, and it grows our debt tremendously. He added, It just takes the poor trajectory our countrys fiscal state is on and exacerbates it.
As much as he relished the battle against ObamaEuropean, he repeated, with some gustohis real fight was for the ideological identity of the Republican Party, and with colleagues who were content to simply criticize the White House. If youre going to criticize, then you should propose, he told me. A fault line divided the older and more cautious Republican leaders from the younger, more ideological members. Ryan was, and remains, the leader of the attack-and-propose faction. ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_lizza#ixzz22wSG7JyZ
xchrom
(108,903 posts)JHB
(37,158 posts)...and history has given us good reason to be scared of his type.
Also, If youre going to criticize, you should propose requires actually proposing, not leaving the essentials to handwaves. There;s a word (or several) for people who don't do what they claim to do.
Cosmocat
(14,563 posts)He was an automatic and uncritical vote of all the disasters during the Bush years that constitute 85% of the current debt problem, but somehow is now championed as the voice of reason for party that fundamentally only has one singular goal - destroying the current president of the united states.
He is a fraud, complete and total.
Like Romney, a guy who simply just looks the part.
That is it. He is simple minded and just a tool to advance the same horrific republican scam they keep relentlessly advancing, year, after year, after year.