The many terrible ideas of Paul Ryan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Bain Capital and my tax returns? Let's distract voters with Paul's crazy ideas instead!

He's known for his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system, but, as Jon Chait notes, that's actually one of the least terrible of his budgetary ideas:

The real radical elements of Ryan's plan lie elsewhere. There's his huge tax cuts for the rich combined with hide-the-ball mumbo jumbo to obscure its costs, his enormous and wildly disproportionate cuts in programs for the poor, his callous proposal to uninsure everybody who got insurance from Obamacare and then many millions more, and then his crazy budgeting that would slowly phase out the entire non-defense, non-entitlement functions of the federal government. These ideas are all individually dangerous, and collectively extreme almost beyond description. By the current standards of Ryan-esque radicalism, the Medicare component is positively quaint.

And then, of course, there are his other ideas. Take his anti-choice views:

He has said he's "as pro-life as a person gets" (opposing any and all compromise and objecting even to having a "truce"), which makes him radical extremist even by the radically extremist standards of the Republican Party. He doesn't just oppose Planned Parenthood, he would prosecute women for having abortions. As Michelle Goldberg writes, "when it comes to women's control of their bodies, he quickly turns into a statist," in stark contrast to his Ayd Rand-inspired fight for absolute individualism (which is basically the foundation for his economic policies). "To him, a woman's claim to bodily autonomy or self-determination doesn't merit even cursory consideration."

Paul Ryan isn't just the leader of the Republican Party's anti-government movement, which dominates the party, he's the poster boy for its war on women.

He's also stridently against marriage equality (and opposed the repeal of DADT), and so very much in line with his party's anti-gay bigotry, and radically pro-gun, well beyond basic gun ownership. As the Times notes, "He voted in 1999 against a proposal that would have established much more stringent requirements for background checks on people buying firearms at gun shows. He voted last year for a gun-rights bill under which a permit to carry a concealed firearm in one state would be valid in almost every other state." 

And of course he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and is opposed to the contraception coverage, which like other opponents he says is about "religious liberty" but which is really about the imposition of theocracy, the imposition of his religious views on everyone else.

On foreign policy, the one good position he's taken was to end the embargo on Cuba, but otherwise he's a typical George W. Bush-style conservative, but without any significant experience or understanding of the world, much like Romney.

I'm not sure terrible is a strong enough way to put it.