It’s been a pile on Paul Ryan ever since news of Romney’s VP pick was released on news dump Friday and announced publicly on the day of closing ceremonies for the Olympics. Odd timing to say the least. But the pile on, it’s both good to see and seems to have taken the GOP by surprise. It shouldn’t have, this split has been brewing for a long time:
HuffPo — As I said last time, Mitt Romney, in trying to avoid picking a Sarah Palin as his running mate, has done exactly that with Paul Ryan.
Like Palin did for John McCain, Ryan represents a transparent plea for credibility with the Republican base. And while Ryan is obviously nowhere near as ignorant as Palin, he holds similarly extreme views, inspired by Ayn Rand, no less. In both cases, the choice smells strongly of panic.
Paul Ryan really isn’t that brilliant or novel or anything like that. His Medicare killing budget ideas are unpopular. The reason the right and some centrists seem to be surprized by how easily he is being ripped apart reflects nothing unusual about Paul Ryan, but does point to a weakness in the right-wing apparatus that created him: edifices built on fantasy and wishful thinking eventually collapse under their own weight.
For years Paul Ryan was mostly covered by the likes of adoring wingnut bloggers, Fox News, and centrists that gave him loving tongue baths. Now he’s suddenly out in the real world, unshielded by the usual alternate universe support network built up by the Kochs and the Coors and the rest of those evil fucking greedy bastards, and it shows. It turns out Ryan and his ideas not as scintillating or popular as the DC villagers and friends wanted to believe.Whocodenodeit?
I am always totally amused that Ayn Rand, an outspoken atheist, still manages to draw support for her twisted philosophy of economics primarily from fundamentalist protestants and catholics. It’s almost as if they don’t actually know what it is they’re really supporting, or have a clue about the people who originated such (bad) ideas. It’s as if they were entirely ignorant or uneducated about their own positions.
We think of Mitt RMoney as being wealthy, but by all accounts he can add up his net worth and only use two commas.
As AlterNet notes, by bringing Ryan on board, the ticket now has an open door to the Koch Brothers™ and other three-comma 1%-of-1%ers, who seem quite willing to invest now for a payoff in 2016.
I’m not convinced that this is the case. It certainly feels that way to me, but I am not writing off the possibility that it is the result of subconscious misogynist attitudes on my part, combined with the influence that a severely misogynist media spin has on me.
Don’t get me wrong; Palin is definitely a complete idiot. I’m just not so sure that Ryan isn’t, or that perhaps we are just giving him more of a pass because of his penis.
In any case, for purposes of political analysis, this is no more than a nitpick: It’s doubtless than Ryan does not come across as anywhere near as ignorant as Palin, regardless of whether or not some or all of that is down to sexism.
BTW I was trying to write a better post, but per usual, the computer I was on sabotaged that idea and had me and an IT guy waste a fuckling hour booting and rebooting and unplugging shit and plugging shit back in, because the key board suddenly started not printing certain letters out of the blue. This is a top notch system at work at a software devlop;ment company.
It’s an unbelievably fucked up level of dysfunctionality we put up with in these goddamn expensive pieces of shit. The epic failures of PC-network technology find a way to reimpress me almost each and every day.
Misogynist or classist in this case? Or both?
Sarah Palin came from a working class family, while Paul Ryan was a trust fund baby (whose family money came from government contracts, of course).
I’m waiting to see if Paul Ryan really is smarter than Sarah Palin. From what I’ve seen of him so far, he isn’t. He doesn’t throw off the “I’m an uneducated bumpkin from the backwoods” cues that Sarah Palin did, but he does throw off the “I’m an intellectually uncurious rich kid who doesn’t actually understand half of what I talk about” cues. At least that’s what I’ve picked up from him the appearances I’ve seen over the past few years.
I would argue that Ryan is more articulate than Palin, and definitely comes off as being from the upper class rather than the working class, but the actual substance of what he says is not measurably different, In other words, Ryan is straight up stupid, while Palin may simply be uneducated and ignorant, although I don’t think so. Regardless, Ryan has if anything fewer excuses for his bullshit.
Good point, I hadn’t considered that angle. I think you are absolutely right.
It’s frustrating, because I think the media’s harsh treatment of Palin was every bit deserved… I just think maybe some of it was subconsciously motivated by the wrong reasons. But I don’t want to complain about it! :D
The few bits of wingnut commentariat I could stand to watch (excerpted to reasonable programs) seem to think if the country just saw a true conservative (not the Mittwit panderer) they will rush to the polls to finally drown government in the bathtub. Fortunately a bunch of the elderly may not like exactly who gets drowned in the Ryan plan.
I think what sets Paul Ryan apart from Sarah Palin is that he has a complete set of (economic) policies you can point to. I think anyone with a basic understanding of economics will recognize how bad those policies are. Well… if the individual is not blinded by partisan loyalty, they should be able to see the horrible consequences of his budget were it to be implemented.
With Sarah Palin, on the other hand, it was all word salad, all the time. So I disagree with Dalillama @6:
I don’t think there was any “substance” to Palin. I think Ryan’s “substance” is equally as ignorant as Palin’s lack of substance, but Ryan does have more to his economic policies than Palin did/does. Ryan’s position isn’t incomprehensible, it’s just irrational, and the numbers don’t add up, and it severely harms a majority of Americans, and…
Exactly. Palin was a “face”, that’s all. She was tapped to shake up the race, excite the base, and hopefully, broaden the GOP’s appeal beyond white males. Ryan had at least thought about national issues before getting the call.
Romney’s handling of Ryan’s policies has been the typical two-faced response we’ve come to expcet from him. He’s both praising it while at the same time, stressing that he has his own “plan” for the budget and economy. Just don’t ask him for any details about them. He’ll deign to let us know about them once he’s
corronatedelected by us peons.Well…”gesture in the direction of” if we’re being generous. The central keystone of the Paul Ryan scam is the claim that he does have an economic plan. Instead, what he actually proposes is a list of right-wing wishes along with trillions of dollars worth of hand-waving. Which is, honesly, about what Palin gave — it’s just that her hand-waving was social-conservative, while Ryan’s hand-waving is Randroid. Either way, saying “Oh, we’ll fill in that hole that makes up the majority of our proposal with this totalitarian ideological fantasy” is equally bullshit whether the fantasy involved is Randroid or theocrat.
So a vice presidential candidate has a plan that, if enacted, will destroy the economy, and this is an improvement.
We are obliterating parody by driving reality over it roughshod.
Excellent fucking comments folks, thank you.
Ahh but can Ryan do the winking starburst thing that palin apparently managed? I think that should be put into the job description for vice president.
Sounds like a weird arse keyboard problem Stephen, is it wireless? I’ve only seen that issue with wireless interference, catastrophically messed up drivers or physical damage
We think it was either a MSFT update that didn’t load correctly or a conflict with a work tool and driver interface. Seems to be working now.
I think Romney is the Palin of the Romney campaign. Nothing but vague platitudes and contradictions and word salad. Only instead of saying “gosh-darn” he says “marvelous” and instead of talking about snow machines and hunting he talks about how many of his friends are NASCAR owners.