Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Who Is Paul Ryan?

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Mitt Romney's choice for his vice presidential running mate is an unknown for most voters.

For the past two years, Ryan has used his role as chairman of the House Budget Committee and his seven terms in office to rise above the other 434 members of the House and become a mover and shaker among Washington insiders.

He is a rock-star favorite of the tea party's fiscal hawks. His stands on social issues make him a favorite of the far, far right as well. The choice is charging up the Republican base to support a Romney-Ryan ticket.

Now center stage on a national campaign, Ryan's story will soon be placed under a microscope, told and retold by both friend and foe. We will learn what he reads and whether or not he can name a Supreme Court case and what he sees as exceptional about America. He will be asked over and over again who will benefit and who will pay under proposals now known as the Ryan budget.

Ryan will be asked about his energetic opposition to funding for family planning services that run from birth control to in-vitro fertilization to abortion, and about his commitment to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ryan will have to explain why he is drawn to novelist Ayn Rand's deeply anti-government economic concepts, laid out in her collection of essays, "The Virtue of Selfishness."

When the questions are all asked and answered and asked and revised and answered again, Paul Ryan is unlikely, one way or the other, to be one of those vice-presidential candidates who is never heard from again.

If Democrats think that Ryan is a walk-over, they are kidding themselves. He has already demonstrated his capacity to make the radical seem reasonable. He will be a tough competitor.

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