"Same As He Ever Was" (the love of Paul Ryan among centrists LOL!) by Paul Krugman

[applegrove]

Same As He Ever Was

by Paul Krugman at the NY Times

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/same-as-he-ever-was-3/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

"SNIP......................



The latest Paul Ryan budget is getting a lot of well-deserved flak, and so is Ryan himself. The combination of cruelty and raw dishonesty is so obvious, it’s hard to see how anyone can fail to see what’s going on.

But Ryan hasn’t changed; his budgets have always been like this, and so has he. Yet for years he was the darling of centrist pundits, who proclaimed him an “honest, open-minded, solution-oriented fiscal conservative.” What were they thinking?

The answer was that they wanted someone to fill that role; they knew, just knew, that there had to be people like that — because if there weren’t, if there weren’t any serious, honest conservatives with real influence, shrill people like me were actually right. And that couldn’t be true. So they invented a character called “Paul Ryan” who was what they wanted to see, but bore no resemblance to the real character with that name.

And while Ryan himself may have been devalued — although I’m not even sure of that — there will be others. Remember all the praise lavished on Chris Christie until Bridgegate broke? Again, it was easy to see what Christie was — but only, apparently, for those of us not committed to the belief that sensible moderates must exist in the GOP.



......................SNIP"

[Ed Suspicious]

1. I have no idea what a centrist is anymore. His plans seem very right wing to me.

[applegrove]

2. I think he's off the charts too.

[rgbecker]

3. The search will continue, but the number searchers is rapidly declining.

Maybe David Brooks is still looking, but that's about it. My moderate, centrist Republican friends are pretty much done looking.

[applegrove]

6. That is good to hear - people waking up.

[JEFF9K]

4. Paul Ryan combines cruelty, dishonesty, and STUPIDITY ...

Paul Ryan combines cruelty, dishonesty, and STUPIDITY ... He's the perfect Republican!

[AgingAmerican]

5. When he calls himself a 'wonk' I always laugh

His so called budgets are barely pamphlets filled with standard RW talking points. Any RW hillbilly could regurgitate that nonsense.

[applegrove]

7. People who have empathy and are decent human beings will keep looking

for the good in an evil situation. You don't want the country to be at risk by a cabal of evildoers. You don't want to admit how badly you have been fooled. And psychopaths will make their false reality seem realer than real that their pawns and patsies can't quite judge what is what anymore. So they keep projecting their humanity onto people like Paul Ryan. So they don't have to suffer the loss.