The plutocrat’s dream team

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

There is always talk about a “dream team” whenever there is an Olympics like the London Games that concluded last weekend. With a sense of timing that he has not always displayed, Mitt Romney waited until the American media hype about the success of the U.S. 2012 Olympic team had died down to announce the makeup of his own dream team for the presidential contest.

But dream teams don’t always get the gold. And Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, Romney’s choice for vice presidential running mate, may do more to hurt than to help Mitt get across the finish line first in November’s contest.

It sure does not look that way right now. Romney has been falling substantially behind President Barack Obama in recent polls. During the dog days of summer, the challenger’s campaign also was suffering from a serious enthusiasm deficit, even among Republicans. The selection of Ryan has, in the language of the political pundits, energized Romney supporters.

In the first few days after Ryan came on board, Romney-Ryan looked like the dynamic duo. They also drew larger and more passionate crowds than Romney alone had been able to muster. Sympathetic commentators used words like bold, visionary and brilliant to describe Romney’s move.   

But everything that shines isn’t gold. Ryan’s views on economic and social policy are at the extreme right of the Republican Party – no mean feat considering how monolithically right-wing the GOP has become.

Ryan is known (where he is known, which is virtually nowhere outside the Washington Beltway and his home state) mainly for three things.

One, he may be more physically fit than any other member of Congress.

Two, other than Alan Greenspan, Ryan is arguably the most famous admirer of Ayn Rand, whose ideas make Adam Smith sound like a communist and whose novels and “objectivist philosophy” have drawn withering fire from literary critics and philosophers alike.

Third, Ryan is famous or, rather infamous, for proposing an alleged budget which lacks much of what a budget requires, like specific numbers that add up and that tell you where you are going to get more money for the military and for new tax breaks for the rich.

One thing is clear: Ryan’s pseudo-budget is an ideologically-inspired smokescreen for cutting the heart out of Social Security and Medicare in the name of reducing the deficit. That has been the Republican dream forever.

Ayn Rand would have loved it. But how will it play in Florida, a key state? Polls show that seniors there and all over the country hate Ryan’s proposed obliteration of programs they like and benefit from. Republicans have tried to play a generational divide-and-conquer game with seniors, telling them the new rules won’t apply to anyone over 55. No sale: the elderly recoil from the idea of throwing their children and grandchildren under a bus.

And there are more seniors than ever today, they vote at higher rates than younger voters, and they are unlikely to be impressed by the reputed tautness of Paul Ryan’s abdominal muscles.

Elections are often hard to predict but more so in the United States because so many people lack any kind of coherent political world view or profess to be apolitical. The Greeks had a word for a person who is not interested in the political affairs of the community: idiot.

By that definition, with which I agree, there are a lot of idiots in this country, so anything could happen. Didn’t George W. Bush get elected…twice! OK, he was elected once and the other time he came close enough so that his brother, the Supreme Court, and the archaic, anti-democratic Electoral College could hand him the office.  

Still, it is hard to see how Ryan adds to Romney’s numbers. The kinds of people that now are all excited about Paul Ryan abhor Barack Obama. They may not love or trust Romney, but they would have come out to vote for him anyway in order to smite and spite Obama.

On the other hand, for people unhappy about the economy or disappointed with Obama but also uncomfortable with Romney because of how much money he has, how he made it, how he hides it and/or for his plastic qualities – both his ever-changing positions and the sense that he is artificial – Ryan can only confirm their worst suspicions.

With Romney, you already knew you were going to get government of the rich and by the rich. The choice of Ryan – with his plan for an aggressive and sharply regressive redistribution of income – signals it will also be government for the rich.

And Ryan has shown he can do the limbo as well as Romney. After citing Ayn Rand repeatedly as the person who most inspired him to enter politics, he renounced her. Not for her celebration of the worst in human nature, however, but because she was an atheist, not exactly a good philosophical guide for an ambitious member of U.S version of the party of God.

The idea of Paul Ryan a heartbeat from the presidency is even more unsettling than visualizing Romney in the White House. But the good news is that by picking Ryan Romney is betraying that he needs to shore up the “base” – the right wing fanatics in the party – instead of moving to the middle to capture key centrist voters. But there is no way Romney can win on the basis of GOP voters alone; even Ryan’s bogus math can’t accomplish that. And without significant support from middle-of the-road voters neither Romney nor Ryan will be seeing the inside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.