Already seems to be forming around the idea that adding Ryan to the GOP ticket is a net positive for the country, since it will now force us all to debate Bold & Serious Policy Solutions™ instead of tax returns and leveraged buyouts and boring ol' stuff like that since now, after all, we have a clash of clearly defined ideologies to analyze and discuss. But I think Tristero cuts the crap as well as anyone I've read today:
It would be nice if that were true. But Randism isn't so much an ideology as it's a cult, roughly akin to Scientology. Randism has as much intellectual integrity as intelligent design creationism or birtherism. As a result, "two distinct ideologies" aren't at play. There is only one: centrism, represented by Obama. What Romney and Ryan offer is just battiness, not a truly coherent vision . . . Any way you look at it, this is terrible news.
It would also be a mistake to think that we would ever be allowed a fair and honest debate about these conflicting ideologies, if in fact they existed at all. That's never going to happen, because if our media watchdogs subjected Ryan's agenda to impartial analysis, and honestly reported its policy implications in all their austerian awfulness, it would by definition be guilty of betraying its Liberal Media Bias. So, for every policy-heavy dispatch the Beltway press corps churns out over the next three months, we'll also be treated to thoroughly neutered fluff jobs like this one in the Post today.
I will admit, one paragraph in this offensively vacuous profile really jumped out at me:
On Capitol Hill, Ryan has been known for his intense pursuit of his hobbies. In the House gym, he participates in grueling morning workouts, using the P90X regimen. On the weekends, press reports have said, he enjoys bow-hunting and “noodling,” which is catching catfish using a hand stuck down their gullets.
That's a pretty apt metaphor for what Ryan and his Randian cohorts have planned for the nation at large, but it begs the question: Is this a common practice among fishermen? I've done my share of freshwater fishing---including for catfish---and I've never heard of anything so, well, creepy. Does anyone else think this is rather bizarre, or do I simply not get out often enough?
And as for bow-hunting, well . . . 'nuff said.
But as to the original point, it's hard to see this pick as anything more than the continued mainstreaming of irrational thought into our national political dialogue. Unless the arbiters of discourse in the DC policy and media elites decide at long last that it would be in the best interest of the commonweal to brand crazy ideas as, well, crazy. Which would be a terrible breach of etiquette, which is why it won't happen.
---Vitelius
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