On election night 1994, I was sitting in the bar at the Inn on the Park with buddy Ron Domini watching the election returns. The networks reported that young George W. Bush upset Ann Richards in the Texas gubernatorial race. I turned to Ron, and said, "We have to defeat these guys now. They take an election like this and then next thing you know they are a viable candidate for President."
When Paul Ryan slipped in to Congress though Wisconsin's First Congressional District, the writing was on the wall. Since the Democrats success in 2008, Ryan carefully positioned himself as a viable candidate for 2012, if not 2016.
Now comes the Wisconsin Public Research Institute Revenge of the Nerd: Why Paul Ryan Could be Our Next President handicapping a Ryan presidential bid.
Actually it is not much different that what we have said here at Waxing America:
- Paul Ryan - Wisconsin's Stand Up Comic - Ryan is a johnny-come-lately to health care and a tool of the worst elements fo the heath insurance lobby.
- Paul Ryan: When Will You Look At the Facts About the Deficit? Ryan makes exaggerated and false statements about the budget and the deficit.
- Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan: Medicare Assassin - he wants to destroy Medicare just as he intends to put Social Security in the hands of the private sector so his buddies can make outrageous transactional fees off the public. Also: Paul Ryan: Alarmist or Fraud, or Both?
- Paul Ryan of Janesville is no Sarah Palin -It is that very private system he is defending that accounts for the expansive cost of American health care.
The difference between Ryan and the younger Bush is not their policies, but that Ryan is not as inept. Which is what makes him so dangerous.
ed note: this post originally appeared February 3, 2010