It was Ronald Reagan...

...who once famously said, "An economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory."

I wonder, sometimes, if the Gipper would say the same thing about today's rigid Republican ideologues.

For example, Paul Krugman's blog has a link to an interview in which Paul Ryan is asked, "If you're a fiscal conservative and you want to provide a safety net, why wouldn't you be for something like a single-payer health care system?"

The interviewer presses Ryan on the subject but essentially gets the same answer from the Wisconsin Republican:

Because it doesn't conform with my ideology.