Ryan: "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Ryan has clearly made the bet that he can offer detailed, controversial, conservative ideas (personal accounts for Social Security; vouchers for Medicare; lower tax rates for the wealthy; freezing most domestic spending) and still prosper politically, as long as voters see him as substantive, civil, inclusive and attentive.
The result is a package very much patterned after Ronald Reagan and former congressman and vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp, perhaps Ryan's most important political mentor, representing affable, big-tent, small-government conservatism.
"Jack had a huge influence on me, his brand of inclusive conservatism, his pro-growth, happy-warrior style. That was infectious to me," says Ryan.
Thus Ryan is personally respectful of Obama while darkly portraying the president's policies as a route to fiscal ruin and moral decay.
"Look, Barack Obama is doing what he thinks is right," says Ryan.
"I just disagree with him. I don't think the man is evil or sinister. I just think he's liberal."
At a recent listening session that Ryan held in East Troy, a constituent told him she was so disturbed by Obama she could hardly open her eyes in the morning.
"I think he wants to destroy private enterprise. I think he's really out to destroy this country," she said.
Ryan let the comment go, one of several he fielded over the course of six listening sessions that day from conservatives angry and exasperated over Obama and Democrats in Congress.
"It's like you're their psychiatrist but you don't charge them. They just want to get this stuff off their chest to you so they can vent. So just let them do it," Ryan explained later, paraphrasing the advice his wife, Janna, once gave him about handling what Ryan called "comments in frustration."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/43705712.htmlhttp://MOXNews.com/February 11, 2010 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/
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