Pierce Brings It

Pierce attacks!

Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz23FfD7zCf

Ezra Klein attacks, too, but in his gentle genteel WaPo way:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-will-be-mitt-romneys-vice-presidential-pick-heres-seven-thoughts-on-what-that-means/

Klein ends with a good point: Ryan is a very gifted political speaker.  He sells his lies and his budget sociopathy with real sincerity and he has a head for figures.

But that still doesn't erase the extraordinary positions that Ryan has taken and the indefensible specifics that Ryan has proposed and Romney has hidden from.

It is telling that - having picked Ryan - the Romney campaign is now telling everyone they don't endorse the Ryan budget.

Good luck with that one, Mitt.

UPDATE: Nate Silver - the NY Times resident Vulcan - has another rational take on it:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/#more-33035