Rush Limbaugh: Paul Ryan is us...

Rush and Ryan: kindred spirits

If there is any doubt what side of the bread Paul Ryan, Romney's handpicked VP running mate -- some say it was a Tea Party shotgun marriage -- butters, we now have a gleeful Rush Limbaugh gushing:

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh jubilantly announced Monday that with the addition of Paul Ryan to the GOP ticket, a true conservative is finally on the ballot.

“We now have somebody on the ticket who’s us,” Limbaugh said of the newly named Republican vice-presidential nominee. “[Somebody] who can explain all of this, who believes all of this in his heart, in his soul, and he can do it with optimism and a smile on his face.” source


Translation:

We now have someone on the ticket that is as far-right as me (Rush Limbaugh) and doesn't look like a Kenyan born, colonist hating, socialist and Muslim like Obama. Paul Ryan will continue to fight for more Reaganomics/Supply-side-economic policies that support tax cuts for the very wealthy. He will cut social programs for the lazy poor people and he will gut the un-American social safety net. And since Ryan is handsome and mild mannered, he can hide his anti-middle class/working class and poor policies behind an adorable smile.

In other words my fellow ditto-heads, Paul Ryan is a Sarah Palin, but with substance.

All jokes aside, Paul Ryan may be a decent, humble and hard-working American; he may truly believe in his economic/budget policies; however, Paul Ryan's greatest economic muse or mentor is Ayn Rand and her views were very extreme and dangerous:

Ryan has referenced Rand repeatedly over the course of her career, saying her writings got him into economics and policy. Ryan told the New Yorker recently that he has been reading Rand since high school; it was “Atlas Shrugged” that got him interested in economics. In March of 2003, Ryan told the Weekly Standard he was still a huge fan.

“I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it,” he said. “Well... I try to make my interns read it.”

If you’re behind on your mid-century philosophy, Rand invented Objectivism, a philosophy which holds that laissez-faire capitalism is the ideal economic system and that all people should pursue their own rational self-interest, not the good of others.

She laid out her theories in two novels, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”, which have long been popular on the ideological right. While Rand is influential among libertarians and conservatives, she saw both groups as insufficiently wedded to capitalism. Still, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are Rand fans; Barry Goldwater was one too.

 source

In politics, as in life, it is all about the company you keep...!