If Paul Ryan were a liberal, conservatives would describe him as a creature of Washington who has spent virtually all of his professional life as a congressional aide, a staffer at an ideological think tank, and, finally, as a member of Congress. In the right’s shorthand: he never met a payroll.
If they were in a sunny mood, these conservatives would readily concede that Ryan is a nice guy who’s fun to talk to. But they’d also insist that he is an impractical ideologue. He holds an almost entirely theoretical view of the world defined by big ideas that never touch the ground and devotes little energy to considering how his proposed budgets might affect the lives of people he’s never met.
In making Ryan his running mate, Mitt Romney guaranteed that this election will be about big principles, but he also underscored a little-noted transformation in American politics: Liberals and conservatives have switched sides on the matter of which camp constitutes the party of theory and which is the party of practice. Americans usually reject the party of theory, which is what conservatism has now become.truthdig
Romney’s Theorist
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
We already knew that Ryan was new intellectual darling of the right. The only question was whether Romney would embrace him or distance himself from him. Inexplicably, Romney went one better and "married" him. It would seem to make the D's job of defining Romney that much easier. They don't even have to , ala LBJ, call him a pigf*#@er and make him deny it. It's like they've announced that they're pigf*#@ers and think we're going to vote for them anyway.
ReplyDeleteOn the ABC Sunday news roundtable. Cokie Roberts and all but one of the other panelists talked about how there is an unwritten rule that if you have to educate voters during an election....you lose that election. She said Paul Ryan's budget will require a lot of education for voters, whereas the Obama campaign can simply repeat "it will eliminate Medicare as we know it" forcing the the Romney campaign to go into long discussions for a rebuttal.
ReplyDeleteThen editor of The Wall Street Journal, seeming to not have paid any attention during the previous five minutes of the other panelist discussing how hard of a sale it would be, said Romney and Ryan will have detailed discussions, next week, with voters telling them how the budget benefits the nation as if it will be simply wrapped up in weeks.
I really think Romney likely thinks it will be that easy because he is from an environment (consulting/venture capital firms) and generation (Baby Boomers) where everyone tells their boss everything is going well, no problems, then they cut corners to deliver and then later cover-up any problems that spring up.
As liberals learned long ago, ideology usually loses.
ReplyDeleteI think liberals learned, over-learned probably, that liberal ideology usually loses. It seems that they've been running away from it for so long that they haven't bothered to check if the rule still applies. Meanwhile, Republicans have completely chucked pragmatism and grow more ideological by the year. Did Dionne just fall off a truck? It's not like it's a new phenomenon, and yet the R's seem to get more than their share of wins. They even seem to win when they lose. It seems that Dionne is just describing yet another application of the IOKIYAR rule. Maybe a liberal with Dionne's years of experience in Washington could explain the genesis and history of that rule.
"Americans usually reject the party of theory"
ReplyDeleteProbably one of the biggest reasons of success of the nation is pragmatism.
But if conservatism idealism ('austrians', gold-bugs, randyans) takes power and tries to apply their misguided idealism it will be a fatal fate for the nation.
The problem is we are watching neoliberalism go full retard worldwide in their crusade against endogenous money and public governing.
This idealism warfare by TPTB probably will lead us to a new era of warfare and violence if we don't change it. It will also have a counter-reaction of opposed force as people is displaced and thrown off society. Fascism (even if by other name) is a real threat to prosperity and peace now more than ever, and morons everywhere are not helping.
Dionne: "He is great to engage with and really believes what he says. "
ReplyDeleteI think he believes everything he says also.
And every time he opens his mouth to make his technocratic arguments (imo he fancies himself a technocrat on economics issues) about how the nation's fiscal options are severely limited, unsustainable, how the Treasury is reliant on tax revenues, etc... he is making a fool of himself.
The best way to counter these false assertions is with the 100% truth.
You have to expose Ryan's economics as false, misguided, sophomoric, naive, that of a simpleton, against the historic records of western civilization, mathematically impossible, etc... he fancies himself a technocrat and his technocratic view is completely false.
The challenge is that many on the left (progressives) are making these same technocratic mistakes, and if you expose Ryan on these issues, you will be at the same time exposing morons on the left progressive side. But it still must be done.
Long time friendships and professional relationships will be tested for progressives, but that is too bad. If they are true friendships they will survive.
Rsp,
Matt,
ReplyDeleteRegressive progressives?
Regressive progressives?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Progressive goals, medieval means. This has been true since the Sixties. Many if not most progressives are great at analyzing what's wrong with the system and quite good at proposing goals, but they are clueless about means and worse at strategy, since they are either shooting themselves in the foot, if not the head, most of the time.