Paul Ryan, deconstructed

Charles Pierce in my view holds the honor of posting perhaps the most devastating and erudite take-down of Rep. Paul Ryan blogged so far, since Saturday when Mitt Romney choose the Wisconsin winger to share the GOP presidential ticket.

Pierce, a former Wisconsin journalist who now covers politics for Esquire magazine, lit into Ryan big time in a moderately lengthy post. Every sentence is delicious writing and full of disdain for Ryan, who was in the House of Representatives the architect of the GOP "dismantle Medicare and much of the rest of the social safety net while hiking the deficit by trillions" budget plan -- if, that is, you can call it a plan when Ryan says future congresses will have to specify unknown spending cuts over the next 28 years to make his factually lacking little package actually add up dollar-wise.

Pierce's screed is a solid read, and you'll find it at the URL below, but here's a passage that ought to seal the deal for you:

In any way that will come to matter to the people whose lives his policies will make harder and more miserable, Paul Ryan is still the high-school kid living off Social Security survivor benefits and reading Ayn Rand by flashlight under the sheets. Instead, he's a guy pretending to be something he's not, and doing so back in Janesville in a very swell Georgian mansion, which just happens to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which, among other things, means that Paul Ryan, who lies awake at night worrying that The Deficit will come and eat our grandchildren, lives in a house overseen by the National Park Service, which means that he qualifies for a 20-percent investment tax credit for the house he lives in. Of course, his "budget" would largely decimate the NPS, but that would be only those parts of it enjoyed by other people. Yes, Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver, has done very well by the federal government that he seeks to dismantle. Come to think of it, so has Willard Romney, although we may never know exactly how well he's done by it. It turns out this is a match made in heaven, after all.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917#ixzz23I3SRX7d