Romney chooses Paul Ryan for VP

Mitt Romney rolled over for the far right extremists in the Republican party, bowing to their demands to choose Rep. Paul Ryan as his Vice President pick. You might recall Mr. Ryan was the proud author of what I like to call “The Roadmap to Middleclass Ruin,” a budget plan so extreme his own party wouldn’t vote for it. You’ll also recall that Roadmap called for destroying Medicare as we know it and turning it into a voucher system that won’t even come close to covering medical costs for senior citizens, who will also be required to go out and find their own darn insurance company that might agree to cover them in their golden age.

Also, Congressman Ryan has spent nearly his entire adult life in politics, collecting a taxpayer funded government paycheck and benefits. I guess that means Romney won’t be mentioning anything about how vital private sector work experience is anymore now that he put a professional politician a heartbeat away from the Oval office.

There is already a flood of commentary on Romney’s choice, so read anything at the link if you want the instant reaction on either side of the fence. One of the best comes from Charles P. Pierce, who spent a fair number of year living in Ryan’s state of Wisconsin and is something of an expert on the man.

Charlie’s take is well worth reading in full at this link but here’s an important excerpt:

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. …

Which, among other things, means that Paul Ryan, who lies awake at night worrying that The Deficit will come and eat our grandchildren, lives in a house overseen by the National Park Service, which means that he qualifies for a 20-percent investment tax credit for the house he lives in. Of course, his “budget” would largely decimate the NPS, but that would be only those parts of it enjoyed by other people.

That’s all I have to say for the moment, so I’ll leave you with this graphic that sums up the core of Paul Ryan:

On the bright side, the choice between the two visions for America’s future just became even more blazingly clear.