Is GOP Budget Guru Paul Ryan Jonah Goldberg Acolyte?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
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He may be the House GOP’s budget guru, and the conservative author of a plan to reduce deficits by slashing Social Security and Medicare, but Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) isn’t always on the side of the GOP base. Under President Bush, Ryan voted for the bank bailout, and then under President Obama voted to authorize the bailout of the auto industry.

What leading light guided him to those controversial votes? According to him, none other than conservative…luminary…Jonah Goldberg–author of the controversial best seller Liberal Fascism.

According to the Daily Beast, “Ryan said his vote for the bailout was influenced by Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a popular book among conservatives that argues that Nazism and other fascist movements were actually left wing in origin, and his belief that a second Depression would threaten capitalism–and rescue Obama’s presidency.”

“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.”

Goldberg’s book was widely panned, but Goldberg himself described it as a “very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.” So who’s to say.

He’s also the same Jonah Goldberg who wrote this:

Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?

A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up, instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment. And if that’s not a good enough reason, maybe this is: If you threaten to take the vote away from the certifiably uninformed, voter turnout will almost certainly get a boost.

An intellectual leader among Republicans.

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