Judged by the entirety of his career, Ryan is merely a good-looking version of a typical Obama-era Republican. He calls for budgetary discipline while exploding the deficit. He speaks of lowering taxes but merely shifts the burden to the middle class. Back in the Bush administration, he rarely met a boondoggle he didn\u2019t embrace. On social issues, he may as well be Pat Robertson: Ryan co-sponsored a federal \u201cfetal personhood\u201d amendment, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, and offered legislation to prevent Medicaid from funding abortions even in cases of rape or incest.<\/p>\n
Yet the punditocracy fantasy version of Ryan persists and has now corrupted the mainstream media\u2019s narrative, as if Elvis actually were in the building and planning to sing \u201cLove Me Tender\u201d to the GOP in Tampa. As Matt Miller pointed out in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, ever since Romney picked Ryan, the news \u201chas been filled with talk of the \u2018fiscal conservative\u2019 [NPR] \u2018intent on erasing deficits\u2019 [New York Times<\/em>] who has become \u2018the intellectual heart of the Republican Party\u2019s movement to slash deficits\u2019 [Washington Post<\/em>].\u201d These are decidedly odd descriptions to apply to a politician whose original plan would have likely added $60 trillion to the national debt\u2014reduced to a mere $14 trillion in its more recent formulation.<\/p>\n What lies behind the pundits\u2019 need to create this fictional figure who, in the ridiculous words of the formerly respected right-wing historian Niall Ferguson, \u201cis the one guy in Washington paying attention\u201d? That\u2019s a column for another day. Today\u2019s problem is that the 2012 election may be decided by the punditocracy\u2019s self-delusion and serial dishonesty. It is no exaggeration to say that Paul Ryan\u2019s plan for America, now embraced by Mitt Romney, constitutes a declaration of class warfare by the superwealthy against the rest of us\u2014coupled with an invitation to economic and environmental chaos, and with a side order of political repression and social regression.<\/p>\n