A Rare Stumble by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal – She Thinks Rep. Paul Ryan is a Serious Thinker

Maybe She Just Never Listened to Mr. Ryan

Saturdays bring the weekly column of Peggy Noonan in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.  This week Ms. Noonan contrasts the policies and persona of President Obama with that of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.  In doing so she deviates from her usually incisive observations on politics, economics and government and drives down the road of Republican talking points.

On the President’s leadership and strategy she says this.

He doesn't seem to be as worried about his country's continuance as his own. He's out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from America's deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter.

Yes, there it is, the old class warfare bit.  The argument that any criticism of economic policy that has delivered huge gains in income and wealth to the very top, brought stagnation to the middle and poverty to the lowest segment is “class warfare”.  And yet somehow escaping attention in all of this is that support of policies by Republicans that would further erode the economic position of the middle class and enhance the position of the wealthy is not class warfare.  When the wealthy attack the middle and low income groups, this Republican policy must exempted from any criticism.

But the real sadness in Ms. Noonan’s current account is her praise for the intellectually bankrupt ideas and policies of Republican Paul Ryan.  Mr. Ryan has gained the reputation of a “thinker”, not because of his thoughts or policies but because people like Ms. Noonan and the Washington Post and other journalists that still have a some shred of credibility left have called him a thinker.  Here is Ms. Noonan on Mr. Ryan.

Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true.

which is of course an exact description of Mr. Obama, except his policies and pronouncements do not meld with what Conservatives believe.

What is it that has Ms. Noonan’s admiration?  It cannot be Mr. Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare, creating a huge shift in health care costs to the middle class.  That would be class welfare.  It cannot be Mr. Ryan’s tax and spending proposals which would benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, that would be class warfare. It cannot be Mr. Ryan’s support of programs to eliminate or sharply reduce environmental regulation which would result in a more polluted environment for everyone and economic gains for the very rich, that would be class warfare.  It cannot be his budget numbers, they just do not add up.

 No, here are the words of Mr. Ryan that have enthralled Ms. Noonan.

"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"

Rather than raise taxes on individuals, we should "lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive." The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless." The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."

Well let’s see.  It was Mr. Bush and the Republicans who continued to guarantee the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and while Mr. Ryan is correct on the Solyndra debacle, his farm state Republican colleagues are the ones who insist on higher, not lower subsidies for agriculture. And who are these nameless "bureaucrats", what do they do and where are they? 

As for his “corporate welfare” charge, notice again the lack of specificity.  Like every other Conservative who proposed major cuts in government spending or reduction in corporate welfare programs, Mr. Ryan identifies none that he would cut, knowing that once he does so he loses the support of his party and his financial backers.  He has already lost the support of his "replace Medicare with private insurance" plan.  Even Mitt Romney won't go there.

So in the end we are left with empty rhetoric which elevates Mr. Ryan into the role of a “thinker”.  Is it because “he reads”?  Maybe the message here is that politicians, particularly Conservative ones have so little to offer, so little intellectual basis in the ideas, so little programs other than class warfare against the weak, the poor, the young and the uneducated that someone who “reads” is the best that they can offer.