Paul Ryan is turning out to be about as conventional a GOP hack as you could find. Toned pecs and boyish charm notwithstanding, his stands on actual policy issues and his willingness to round the corners of sharply defined subjects is nothing at all new.
And he even dutifully reads out of the GOP blast-fax hymnal. Obama is raiding Medicare! he complains, even though Ryan would do the very same thing only worse. Obama bankrupted the country with stimulus monies Ryan would never accept -- except that he did. And so on. The latest Ryan genuflection to conservative conventional wisdom:
We all "know" or are supposed to know thanks to massive conservative meme-building, that Republicans are religious while Democrats are secular and anti-life. The latest Republican campaign talking point was issued yesterday, right in the middle of the Democratic National Convention: How come, anonymous Republicans and then pundits wondered, the Democratic Party platform didn't -- horrors! -- mention God?
That was the theme of Wisconsin-native Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show, as described by John Amato at the excellent Crooks & Liars political website:
How good was Michelle Obama's speech? All you need to know is that as soon as Michelle delivered a wonderful speech Tuesday night, Greta's first question out of the gate to Xavier Becerra wasn't about how she performed. No way. It was: Why had the Dems removed the word 'God' from the party platform? Seriously.
It didn't take Ryan long to get aboard the GOP "Democrats are heathen non-believers" train. The right-leaning Washington Times newspaper covered Ryan's comments Wednesday on Fox News:
Ryan on Wednesday told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that the change is not in keeping with the country’s founding documents and principles and suggests the Obama administration is behind the decision. The Republican platform mentions God 12 times.
The 2008 Democratic Party platform made a single reference to God, referring to the “God-given potential” of working people.
The new platform does contain a plank on faith, saying it “has always been a central part of the American story.”
Really? This is an issue? We're more godly than you. One would have thought that after decades of this nonsense, we would have been past it, by now, but in this year's national election, when Republicans can't get traction on real issues, they increasingly portray -- or invite you to portray -- Barack Obama as a foreigner/muslim/socialist/atheist of a (ahem!) shadowy persuasion who doesn't understand 'Murca. Meanwhile, Democrats in general are satantic or at least fallen because they don't go around yelling about religion or openly aligning themselves with whacko Christian fundamentalist groups and pro-lifers. Or wear lapel pins featuring aborted fetuses.
And now Paul Ryan, pseudo-intellectual, purported big thinker and proto-statesman, has joined America's political equivalent of the Sith, along with his increasingly souless political party. You can break the Ten Commandments at will, but only if you're a Republican; Democrats get no such pass, at least not from those same wingnuts. Even when they're toeing the line.
So next chance you have to torture yourself by watching Ryan exert his mumbo-jumbo mojo, you might consider taking up a new drinking game: Chug a brewsky every time Janesville's boy wonder says "God," because, he says, that's where all of his (and by extension, all of America's) principles are derived from -- a narrow, laughingly parochial understanding of religion and its influence on the US Constitution beyond the First Amendment.
But look out, because if you disagree, then to Ryan and his ilk you're just another of those heathen Obama-ites who are working to undermine and destroy 'Murca.