Almost like reading Daily Kos, weirdly including the comments, particularly those questioning the word "well-intentioned". Who knew that there were Conservatives left?
The American Conservative
State of the Union
The Boy in the Bubble
By Scott Galupo • August 30, 2012, 12:01 AM
Rep. Paul Ryan delivered a fabulous speech Wednesday night…There is, however, a great disconnect between Ryan’s reality and the reality that the rest of us inhabit.…His speech, for all its many fine qualities, is an emblem of the superficial attractiveness and substantive bankruptcy of this intelligentsia.
Now, we must be clear.
The American Conservative was founded in opposition to the Republican Party, specifically the Iraq War. It claims to represent the Old Right, the True Conservative point of view.
The American Conservative is a monthly journal of opinion published by the American Ideas Institute. It reflects traditional American conservatism that has argued vigorously against American interventionism, against a debt-based fiscal policy used to finance adventurism abroad and government growth at home, and against the intrusions on Americans’ private lives by an exploding state security apparatus. In general, TAC represents an anti-war and Old Right voice against the dominance of what it sees as a neoconservative strain on the Right. In 2009 Reihan Salam wrote that the publication had "gained a devoted following as a sharp critic of the conservative mainstream."
In 2002 The American Conservative was founded by Scott McConnell, Patrick Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos in opposition to the Iraqi War. "The idea of "The American Conservative" was that there were enough who disagreed with mainstream conservatism—libertarians, paleoconservatives, and civil libertarian conservatives, among other dissenters—to warrant such a publication.
Before the 2006 midterm elections, The American Conservative urged its readers to vote for Democrats, saying, "It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large—as a decisive “No” vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome."
I have said before, and expect to say again: You know you are in trouble when Pat Buchanan is the sane one.
I'll let you read the litany of Paul Ryan's offenses against reality yourself, although all of the elements are well-known to Kossacks. It is too long to summarize here. Instead, here are a few snippets from the dKos-like comments.
The most amazing thing is that the likes of Paul Ryan are now seen as conservative.
Before late 2008 I wondered about the Republican silence as Bush ran budget deficits year after year, just as Reagan and George H. W. Bush had done. Then, as you would expect, deficits ballooned…
Ryan is an extremist hypocrit[e]. He pushes radical ideas, but when push comes to shove he has voted for the opposite. His bread and butter are lies; small ones, big ones, dangerous lies, the kind of lies that can weaken a nation…Oh yeah, one more thing…the only job creators are consumers.
They work hard, but at the end of the day, what can they be said to have “built”?…our market/economy has shifted from production to finance-driven, where banksters and vulture capitalists shuffle paper, exploit tax-law loopholes and produce “wealth”.
not sure how “well intentioned” or “talented” are appropriate for this article.
“well-intentioned”?
…if there was a God [Ryan] should have been struck by lightning as the last word left his lips.
How are we defining “well-intentioned” here? What is it that you believe he intends or hopes to actually do? If his plan is to pave the road to hell, his presumed good intentions will serve him well, but I like to judge intentions within the context of goals, and from what I’ve seen so far Ryan isn’t sufficiently honest to state his actual goals.
Dear Mr. Galupo: Please allow me to help you edit your piece more tightly. Try this: Paul Ryan’s proposals are idiotic. And either Paul Ryan is an idiot too, or he thinks more of the rests of us are idiots.