Paul Ryan - Nationalizing Industry to Save the Free Market

Republicans and Libertarians alike are smitten. They’ve spent the last few weeks falling all over themselves for a guy that they hope is the next big thing for the Right, Congressman Paul Ryan.

A couple of weeks ago, their dream hunk gave a very interesting and very revealing response when asked by Benjy Sarlin from the Daily Beast about yes votes cast by Ryan for both TARP and the auto bailouts – both Bush initiatives - that seemingly contradict his professed ideology. “I'm a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP... represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral," he said. "I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system."

Holy Santa Claus shit, where do I start? I’ve never seen this much stupid crammed into two sentences before.

First a little background on Ryan. He’s a congressman from Wisconsin who has received millions in Wall Street contributions, no surprise there. It also bears noting that he is Sarah Palin’s favorite young Republican, also shocking. Palin loves him so much she went so far as to suggest that he aim for the presidency in 2012. Thankfully, for those of us not interested in an American future that resembles the Mad Max environment, Ryan, in a seldom witnessed act of sanity, ignored advice from Sarah Palin and has ruled out a presidential run. Although this has led some to speculate that the ticket might instead be Palin/Ryan Beyond Thunderdome. Really. God help us.

Let’s also note that Ryan voted yes for the fraudulent bank handout, aka TARP, whose investigators have opened 86 criminal investigations, 77 of which were ongoing as of December 31, 2009. As the inspector general’s report states, “These investigations include complex issues concerning suspected TARP fraud, accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bank fraud, mortgage fraud, mortgage servicer misconduct, fraudulent advance-fee schemes, public corruption, false statements, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and tax-related investigations.” Yeah, TARP was awesome. Who could have foreseen that hurling bags of cash with virtually no strings attached at the very criminals who had just completed the greatest robbery in American history would result in more fraud? Not Ryan apparently. He still believes it saved us from a second Great Depression. Oh boy…

Then he votes no, like almost every single other Republican, against the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka economic stimulus package, which according to a report issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office helped create up to 1.6 million jobs as of Fall 2009 and stoke real GDP up to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been without it. Unlike his beloved TARP, Ryan called the ARRA “wasteful spending” and then, in a story that’s getting pretty old, requested funds from it for his district in a not so shocking act of blatant hypocrisy.

Also, and as quoted above, Ryan throws down the new favorite GOP/Libertarian buzz word, “statist”, which we should take the opportunity to define because we’re going to be hearing it a lot from now on from guys like him. It incorporates the conflicting ideologies of fascism and socialism under one umbrella, conveniently skirting the issue Conservatives were having with labeling Obama as both. In fairness to the Right, Obama has only been serving in the federal government for thirteen years, which clearly isn’t enough time to ascertain whether his goal is to turn this country into present day Finland or Nazi Germany, but they know he’s up to something.

And how. At one point during the interview, Ryan attributes his votes for TARP and the auto bailouts to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a book about the supposed liberal origins of fascism and the Nazi Party. It’s been received more as historical fantasy than a work to be taken seriously, but I guess nobody’s mentioned that to Ryan who saw a looming second Great Depression as the perfect opportunity for the conniving Obama to enact his liberal-fascist-Nazi-socialist agenda.

Lost on Ryan apparently is the all too obvious. If Obama really did have a motive to sweep through a huge statist agenda, why would he have proposed, fought for, and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which by all accounts kept the second Depression at bay? The economy was headed off a cliff. The ARRA effectively spoiled any opportunity for Obama to enact his “real” agenda by saving the economy from collapsing under the weight of free-market fueled greed and deregulation. So why would he do it? And these are the same guys supposedly proposing the “common sense” solutions to our problems. Right now they’re sitting in a room somewhere trying to figure out why Obama sabotaged his own master plan and how it’ll enable him to enact his “new real” agenda somewhere down the line. For someone who they don’t believe has enough sense to effectively lead this country they sure do give him a lot of credit for concocting multi-stage schemes that would make a super villain proud. They can’t decide whether he’s Forrest Gump or the unholy love spawn of Bobby Fisher and Lex Luther.

And here’s the best part. Ryan’s preventative strategy for blocking what he believed to be an impending Obama secret master plan to control the state was – wait for it - to nationalize companies from the financial sector and bail out the auto industry! So genius- a preemptive strike! He stopped Obama’s huge statist agenda by beating him to the punch and enacting one on his own!

Oh how it must have stung. If Ayn Rand gave a shit about anything but herself she would have rolled over in her grave. He admits it was the only move for him because, if there were a collapse, the citizens would have stormed the streets ready to lynch a free-market system that had just Godzilla’d the American economy as if it was Odo Island, and that’s true. But here’s the big question. How bad has free-market ideology let down its disciples when die hard Friedmanites like Ryan have to vote to nationalize industry to save their hallowed free-market? And why on Earth would any sane person want to resurrect such an obviously destructive system so clearly at odds with their supposed core values?

Like most ardent free-marketeers, Ryan probably isn't willing to acknowledge that the principles of free-market ideology - deregulation, exaltation of greed, win at all costs profiteering, etc. - were quite obviously, to anyone who isn't a blind ideologue or hasn't been deluded by the corporate fueled spin machine, at the absolute core of the economic collapse. But this guy is on a whole different level of denial.

If he really is a true believer, he’s delusional. If not, he’s a shill. Either way Sarah Palin’s right, he really is the perfect presidential candidate for the GOP. Bring him on.