"It was the best of times; it was the blurst of times." (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Paul Ryan has been a little down, of late. It turns out that proposing a budget that would end Medicare and give all the old people vouchers to just get whatever insurance they could manage to scrounge up did not, in fact, result in him being celebrated as America's greatest political hero. Go figure. He's even been reduced to
hiding from his constituents (or
charging them cash to hear him talk), which is almost certainly not what he expected would happen back when he was being lauded as conservatism's next and greatest hero.
But according to a passel of Republicans who were willing to say nice things about him to Politico, that's not going to stop his continued awesomeness. He's an idea man, you see, and nothing can stop the power of his really bold ideas. You know, like ending Medicare, or giving corporations even bigger tax breaks. Bold!
One of his current tasks will be to call the president "divisive":
“Initially, Ryan was not at all low profile,” a GOP lawmaker said of Ryan’s highly visible role during the early months of the 112th Congress. “As it went on, and they demagogued [the budget], he became more low profile. … I don’t think he was ready for it; I don’t think the entire Republican Conference was ready for it.”
With that controversy behind him, at least for the moment, Ryan said he is committed to taking on the president’s “class warfare” rhetoric — dark passions he thinks President Barack Obama is trying to gin up among voters as he bids for a second term as commander in chief.
“The rhetoric is what I think is really dangerous because the class warfare rhetoric, it speaks to bad emotions within people,” Ryan said in an interview. “It speaks to dark emotions — anger, envy, fear — those are powerful emotions, and I suppose they can be manipulated to good political ends, but it’s reckless, in my opinion, and it divides people.”
Ryan is one of those political figures that both parties love to hear from. Republicans like to hear him talk because he passes for smart, compared to most of the rest of their caucus, and Democrats like to hear him talk because those smart ideas turn out to be wonderful things to hang 'round the necks of other Republicans.
I'm taking the increasing GOP cries of "class warfare" as evidence that the GOP sees the public's increasing hostility towards the richest Americans (and Wall Street, large corporations) as a real problem for them. It's difficult to base a legislative strategy around give rich people all the money if Americans in general are fed up with the notion. Thus, we're going to be seeing an increasing push saying any public demands for fairness or accountability, if directed towards that small set of wealthy people and businesses who have continued to make out like bandits, is uncouth class warfare, and that all the little people just need to shut up already, and all the politicians or others who might support them are "dangerous" or stoking "dark passions."
Sheesh. Heaven knows, Republicans are never divisive, would never think of playing upon anger or fear, and are in fact mortified when confronted with anything that might divide people. This demonization of the calls for fairness as class warfare is really the only thing they can go with. We have been in a mostly-silent class war for several decades: The biggest danger to the uppermost class is that the rest of America might finally be realizing that.