House Speaker Paul Ryan is acknowledging "nobody knows" if the sweeping tax cuts Congress is enacting will produce enough economic growth to fend off soaring federal deficits

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) December 20, 2017

The Paul Ryan Story: From Flimflam to Fascism

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On the other hand, I do have some insight into how Ryan — who has always been an obvious con man, to anyone willing to see — came to become speaker of the House. And that’s a story that reflects badly not just on Ryan himself, not just on his party, but also on self-proclaimed centrists and the news media, who boosted his career through their malfeasance. Furthermore, the forces that brought Ryan to a position of power are the same forces that have brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis.

About Ryan: Incredibly, I’m seeing some news reports about his exit that portray him as a serious policy wonk and fiscal hawk who, sadly, found himself unable to fulfill his mission in the Trump era. Unbelievable.

Look, the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted against the Simpson-Bowles debt commission proposal not because of its real flaws, but because it would raise taxes and fail to repeal Obamacare.

And his “deficit reduction” proposals were always frauds. The revenue loss from tax cuts always exceeded any explicit spending cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility came entirely from “magic asterisks”: extra revenue from closing unspecified loopholes, reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has called that judgment into question.

So how did such an obvious con artist get a reputation for seriousness and fiscal probity? Basically, he was the beneficiary of ideological affirmative action...

Once Upon A Time, There Was A Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver

I swear, it is harder to get the members of our courtier press to give up their fairy tales than it is to get someone off smack. By all reasonable measures, Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin and first runner-up in the most recent vice-presidential pageant, should be a spent force in our politics. Every time he produces a "budget," actual economists collapse in helpless laughter and other Republicans hide behind the drapes. As a vice-presidential candidate, Joe Biden made him look like a child, and Ryan was unable even to carry his own precinct for the Republican ticket. However, that is not to reckon with his army of Beltway acolytes from both sides of the aisle -- And, yes, young Ezra Klein, I am looking at you -- and their undying desire to rehabilitate their imaginary friends.

The country lacked that leadership until today. Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes. Ryan is expected to leap into the vacuum left by the president’s passivity. The Ryan budget will not be enacted this year, but it will immediately reframe the domestic policy debate.

His proposal will set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this discussion. It will become the 2012 Republican platform, no matter who is the nominee. Any candidate hoping to win that nomination will have to be able to talk about government programs with this degree of specificity, so it will improve the G.O.P. primary race.

When Ryan appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," he was interrupted several times to accept more praise. "Let us stop right now and commend him," said host Joe Scarborough, who served with Ryan in the House from 1999 to 2001. "He's in a leadership position," said New York Times financial reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin. "He's come out with a plan, which is more than the Democrats can say."

“He was the great budget reformer,” Charlie Sykes, a former Wisconsin radio host and friend of Ryan’s who broke with him over the election of Donald Trump, said. “He was the guy that got the Republican Party to take entitlement reform and debt reduction seriously.”

Morning Joe rips Paul Ryan for standing by while his GOP sets fire to the Constitution for Trump

Counterposed against [Peter] Wehner’s belief that Ryan is justifiably compromising his values to support Trump is the opinion by former supporter Charlie Sykes that Ryan is infuriatingly compromising his values to support Trump. “I always imagined that there was room for an alternative conservative vision to Trumpism, and Paul Ryan was ideally suited to be that leader of a non-Trumpist conservative Republican Party, but he’s chosen not to assume that role,” Sykes tells the Times. “It’s very disappointing to see he’s become so comfortable as an ally and an enabler of Trump.” 

This Is the Way Paul Ryan’s Speakership Ends

The Republican leader is walking away. Don’t ask him about Trump anymore.

...Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, told me that Trump and Ryan are “just wired differently, like most people are.” McCarthy, a strategic-minded operator with pillowy hair, has forged a genuine bond with Trump — arguably more so than any other lawmaker. Still, like most elected Republicans, McCarthy treads carefully, wary of poking the orange bear. It’s hard to overemphasize the degree to which Trump lives in the heads of elected Republicans. You get a sense of everyone on edge, waiting for the next tweet to drop — as if a tornado siren should accompany its arrival. When I visited McCarthy at the Capitol, the majority leader kept toggling between on and off the record. I asked McCarthy if he thought Ryan wished he could speak out more forcefully on some things the president does that might offend him.

“On the record or off the record?” McCarthy asked me.

On, I would prefer.

McCarthy paused and proceeded with care. “I think history will say that Paul spoke his own mind,” he said...

House Speaker Paul Ryan won't seek re-election

...And so, arrogantly heedless of the same lesson history has taught about tyrants over and over again, and desperate to deliver massive tax cuts to his plutocrat sponsors and a knockout punch to America's already frayed and underfunded social safety net, Paul Ryan went right on ahead and did the one thing Churchill said that one should never, ever do with a crocodile:

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

If Republicans are surprised that Trump betrayed them, they haven't been paying attention

Paul Ryan, the most intellectually ambitious Republican in Congress, lavishly cites [Arthur] Brooks’s book. Over the past few years, Ryan has been promoting a roadmap to comprehensively reform the nation’s tax and welfare system. 

And despite the tough battle talk, they are combinable. At his best, Ryan wants to cleanse and rejuvenate the nation — to sweep away the special-interest sclerosis that strangles flexibility and growth. At his best, Obama wants to create a context for innovation — to employ blue-collar workers and to spur growth clusters like Silicon Valley, which, let us remember, was a magical cocktail of federal research subsidies, hippie culture, entrepreneurial daring and university settings.

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

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So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

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Paul Ryan’s Dance With The Donald

Among the Republicans going along with Donald Trump’s takeover of their party, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, has made a tortuous art — a zigzag of maybes, yes-buts and oh, I guess sos — of protecting his interests en route to capitulating to the inevitable at the nominating convention.

By supporting the Trump candidacy, Mr. Ryan has revealed himself to be a weak opportunist, far from the ideas man and budget wonk he made himself out to be when he secured the vice-presidential nomination four years ago. It probably hasn’t been easy to engage in the political casuistry needed to simultaneously reject and embrace Mr. Trump.

While condemning Mr. Trump’s more hateful utterances, Mr. Ryan has been careful never, ever to criticize Mr. Trump himself...

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

...

Following Mr. Ryan’s endorsement, some insisted that the speaker had little choice. This is false. “My dad used to say, ‘If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem,’ ” Mr. Ryan said in March. When he has a comparable conversation with his children, how will Mr. Ryan explain the decision he made in this campaign?

People Mag Says Paul Ryan Insisted He Not Be Asked About Trump

A Father's Day profile of House Speaker Paul Ryan in the celebrity lifestyle magazine People portrays the lawmaker as a devoted father who takes his kids' sugar intake seriously.

But the story also contains a curious disclaimer noting Ryan requested the magazine not ask him about his party's presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, as a condition of the interview.

That disclaimer reads:

And while his job does require some weekend phone calls to take care of business, Ryan says he doesn’t want to talk politics with his kids. (Or with PEOPLE. One condition of the Speaker getting on the phone for the magazine’s special Fathers’ Day gallery was that he not be asked about his party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, whom Ryan has famously declined so far to endorse.)

When People's writer made a closing joke about Trump, Ryan responded with a chuckle, "I'm hanging up now!" before ending the call, according to the story, which ran online under the magazine's Celebrity Babies vertical...

I'll be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. I'm confident he will help turn the House GOP's agenda into laws. https://t.co/LyaT16khJw

— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) June 2, 2016

@PRyan pic.twitter.com/fZLgsMBhS0

— Matt (@MattinNarberth) June 2, 2016

Paul Ryan Says He Would Serve as Speaker if Republicans Unite

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and EMMARIE HUETTEMAN OCT. 20, 2015

WASHINGTON — Representative Paul D. Ryan said for the first time Tuesday that he would be willing to serve as speaker if all factions of House Republicans could unite behind him.

Mr. Ryan addressed his colleagues and called for a change to the way the job is structured, saying the speaker should be more focused on communicating the message of the party and house and less on fundraising according to members in the room. He urged members to not try and change the rules “for one group.”

...

CASCA:  Why, there was a crown offered him: and being

offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand,

thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.

BRUTUS: What was the second noise for?

CASCA:  Why, for that too.

CASSIUS: They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

CASCA: Why, for that too.

BRUTUS: Was the crown offered him thrice?

CASCA: Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every

time gentler than other, and at every putting-by

mine honest neighbours shouted.

CASSIUS: Who offered him the crown?

CASCA: Why, Antony.

BRUTUS: Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

CASCA: I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it:

it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark

Antony offer him a crown;--yet 'twas not a crown

neither, 'twas one of these coronets;--and, as I told

you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my

thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he

offered it to him again; then he put it by again:

but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his

fingers off it. And then he offered it the third

time; he put it the third time by: and still as he

refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their

chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps

and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because

Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked

Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and

for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of

opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

CASSIUS:  But, soft, I pray you: what, did Caesar swound?

CASCA: He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at

mouth, and was speechless.

BRUTUS: 'Tis very like: he hath the failing sickness...

that went well pic.twitter.com/C70PglVPEb

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) October 21, 2015

A G.O.P. Reunion, With Plans for More Togetherness 

VANDALIA, Ohio — For the first time in almost a month, Mitt Romney reunited on Tuesday with the man who many Republicans thought would charge up the presidential campaign: Representative Paul D. Ryan, the charismatic PowerPoint-wielder who can draw thousands to rallies that are really mostly giant question-and-answer sessions where they can ask “Paul,” in effect, how to save the party, and the country. 

The question now is whether Mr. Ryan, Mr. Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, can save his own ticket.
...

"Oh Jesus,"she said. "You mean they're really going to lie about that too?"

"Of course they are," I said. "After all, once you've trained your base to believe anything, why the Hell not just lie about everything? They're North Korea."

"They are," she said sadly. "They really are."

Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech and His Web of Lies 

by Michael Tomasky Aug 30, 2012

Paul Ryan pushed American politics into new territory with his convention speech, effectively daring Democrats and the media to call him out on his string of blatant falsehoods.

It just boggles the mind to imagine how Paul Ryan can stand up there and lash Barack Obama for abandoning Bowles-Simpson when he did exactly that himself. Or for taking $716 billion out of Medicare that Ryan’s own budget also removes from Medicare. Or try to blame him for the closing of a GM plant that actually closed while George W. Bush was president. Those three lies are just the beginning of a cavalcade that followed. I can’t in clear conscience call such a speech “good” or “effective.” But I will acknowledge that Ryan can spin the goods like nobody’s business...

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove):

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

“Not intended to be a factual statement,” the comment made by a spokesperson for Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and transformed by comedian Stephen Colbert into a pop culture meme has come nearly full circle, as Democrats have begun to use the phrase on the Senate floor.    

...the Pig People would be nothing but a minor nuisance -- a boil on the ass of democracy -- without their  Centrists who keep the "Both Sides Do It" spider hole well-furnished and open for business.  Pound for pound, Centrism is the biggest and most debilitating lie in American politics bar none.  It is the Big Lie that makes all the little lies possible, which is why I focus so hard on those who traffic in it.  They are the ones most vulnerable to and terrified of being called out in public.  They are the ones we must run out of the media on a rail.

How The Media Soft-Plays Paul Ryan’s Lies: ‘Factual Shortcuts,’ ‘Perceived Inaccuracies,’ ‘Questionable Claims’

By Zack Beauchamp on Aug 30, 2012

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters covering the speech have, in many cases, been curiously reticent to call Ryan’s lies what they are. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the euphemisms used in place of “lie” to describe Ryan’s falsehoods...