Ryan Hysteria…Romney’s VP pick enrages the Left.

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Charles C. W. Cooke @ NRO:

The American songwriter and comedian Tom Lehrer once wrote that he didn’t “want to satirize George Bush,” but instead “to vaporize him.” Given Lehrer’s talent for satire, this represented something of a regression. Nonetheless, he was in good company, for, in the world of politics, “vaporization” is a popular choice.

The preference for annihilation over disapprobation has rarely been so luminously on display as during this week. Since Mitt Romney announced his nomination of Paul Ryan for the vice presidency, the House Budget Committee chairman has been metamorphosed into the devil, and a phalanx of those freshly diagnosed with RyanDerangement Syndrome has been released into the unsuspecting public.

Chief among this merry band of hysterics is Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce. Pierce has led the charge against Ryan since Saturday morning’s disclosure, christening the congressman the “zombie-eyed granny-starver,” a “murderer of opportunity,” a “political coward,” and, sarcastically, one presumes, the “Pericles of Janesville.” As Pierce breathlessly explains, Ryan is not merely a man with a differing view of the role of the federal government and a good-faith, if controversial, plan to secure the future, but

an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn’t believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government.

As well there should be, there will be criticism as long as there is politics; and, certainly, one would not expect the Left to like Paul Ryan very much. For starters, Ryan has long had the gauche temerity to observe — in public, no less — that all is not rosy in America’s fiscal future. In doing so, he seems determined to play Senator Seneca to President Obama’s Nero, and it is for this, as much as anything else, that he has carved out his role as Enemy No. 1 of the progressive Left. Those who believe that entitlements run on good intentions will always hate men who come armed with spreadsheets, especially when those spreadsheets neatly explode the myth that all of America’s problems can be solved by increasing taxes on the rich. But Pierce’s hyperbole transcends mere disagreement, as does his dismissal of all those who dissent as “gobshites.” Instead, he seeks to remove Paul Ryan — and his ideas — from polite conversation.

Language such as this is not new, even if Pierce’s is saltier than usual. Descriptions of impending “dystopias” are trotted out every time that a long-term conservative plan is posited. Thanks to Joe Biden’s plagiarism, Neil Kinnock’s famous warning was played on both sides of the Atlantic:

If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain — when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance — when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty — when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay. I warn you that you will be cold — when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.

As a rule, delirious warnings such as these typically represent better literature than prognostication. In reality, the tough choices made by Mrs. Thatcher in England and the Reagan/Bush administrations in the United States did not create an “economy that can’t pay,” but one that did. As a result of the tough love of conservatives in the 1980s, the very social programs that Kinnock and Biden warned were threatened with extinction were provided with the revenues on which they rely — for a time, at least. On the left, this is the truth that dare not speak its name.

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Any pick would have enraged the left. Picking Rubio or Pawlwnty would have angered them as they are “race traitors” as far as the left is concerned. Christie? A bully.
There is no winning with the left.
Bush grew goverment at a significant rate, yet it wasn’t enough for the left who still rabidly hate him.
All I can say is, screw what the left thinks feels.

As I think I mentioned before. If you want some real entertainment and liberals who just can’t let it go as they could not with the Scott Walker thing, visit some local Wisconsin progressive blogs…These people must not have anything else to do with their lives except rail against any and all conservatives they see as a threat to their entitlement society…

@Hard Right: And the Right isn’t guilty of the same offense.

It is NO surprise the 0blama is upset with the Ryan pick. Ryan brings intelligence and understanding to the campaign while Joe brings chains and idiocy.

@Liberal1 (objectivity):

Can you cite an example?