TAIBBI: Ryan & Repub Candidates= young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres"

[kpete]

POSTED: APRIL 7, 11:52 AM ET | By MATT TAIBBI

Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan Has Balls

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.

Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.

............
Ryan is proposing a budget he knows would have no chance of passing in the Senate. He is simply playing out a part, a non-candidate for the presidency pushing a rhetorical flank for an out-of-power party leading into a presidential campaign year. If the budget is a hit with the public, the 2012 Republican candidate can run on it. If it isn’t, the Republican candidate can triangulate Ryan’s ass back into the obscurity from whence it came, and be done with him.

No matter what, Ryan’s gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people. It takes chutzpah to try such a thing, but having a lot of balls is not the same as having courage.

the rest:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/tax-cuts-for-the-rich-on-the-backs-of-the-middle-class-or-paul-ryan-has-balls-20110407

[eleny]

1. "Robespierres" - And we know what happened to Robespierre...

++

[GReedDiamond]

2. Kicked, recc'd...nt

[cameozalaznick]

3. Ah, Matt...

A national treasure.

[highplainsdem]

4. K&R

[bleever]

5. Ryan is a back-bench bombthrower in the mold of Gingrich, but with

a different work-out routine than Newt had.

[truedelphi]

6. But at least our President is calling people like Ryan out on

The tax cuts for the rich and saying how detrimental these tax cuts are - as they will be dding ten times the amount of this huge savings that is being heralded as coming about tonight.

Four hundred billion to Seven hundred billion dollars of tax cuts, and some thirty eight billion dollars in programs whittled back.

Oh wait a minute, the President just addressed the matter, and he didn't have a thing to say about Ryan or the tax cuts. Nothing but some sentimental hype about a bunch of kids from Colorado who will get to see the Lincoln Memorial being open.