Articles Quoting Partisan Hacks as Disinterested Observers We Never Finished Reading

I always depend on the AEI for my direction (more academic than FOX News). I love this advice: “They should give Ryan credit to make hard choices even if they’re not the right choices.”
Com’on give Paul some creds for making “some” choices. Thanks, Paul.

@BobCens: Funny how those Hard Choices always accrue to the benefit of the wealthy.

@nojo:
It’s like you expect the rich to suffer or something.

I felt a Megan McArdle byline coming on, but it turns out some other dope is responsible for this.

Oooh oooh oooh! Horshack is gone.

@mellbell: All he needed to do was frame it some conventional way: “Conservative AEI”, “Neoconservative AEI”, “Milton Friedman Fellating AEI”, “Pseudo-Intellectual Wingnut Front AEI”, whatever. And I would expect any similar framing for, say, the Brookings Institution.

@nojo: There’s also the rhetorical question posing as headline.

So with tax rates at near 70 year lows, corporate profits at record highs, and the 1% wealthier than they’ve ever been in human history, when exactly will they have the “confidence” needed to create new jobs (in the US)?*

*From questions that are never allowed to be asked ever.

@mellbell: The headline was the clickbait that drew me in.

But it’s actually a fair question. Although the fair answer depends on which “liberals” you choose as representative, how you evaluate their claims, and how you evaluate the response to those claims.

Meaning: It’s actually possible to produce something enlightening, although it’s not easy. “That’s not Ryan’s latest plan” isn’t an enlightening answer, given the history of what he’s proposed, and the extreme version of what he himself called “Ryan Unplugged”.

Because Ryan Unplugged is the real issue here. Policies, and the details of policies, change. We’re not voting for policies. We’re voting on the character of people to whom we would grant immense power, and whose Unplugged Character is the very thing we’re forced to trust.

So: Are Liberals Being Unfair to Paul Ryan? Even the extremest of caricatures — Zombie-Eyed Granny Snatcher — suggests what’s at stake: A thorough dismantling of the FDR/LBJ social state. If you don’t acknowledge that, you can’t answer the question.