I dashed off...

...a quick response yesterday to Paul Ryan's speech that looks today as though I dashed off a quick response. (Not crazy about my writing lately.)

But Simon Maloy, writing in Salon, had a much cleaner take. First a quote from Ryan's speech, followed by a point I wish I'd made (my emphasis):

We don’t resort to scaring you, we dare to inspire you. We don’t just oppose someone or something. We propose a clear and compelling alternative. And when we do that, we don’t just win the argument. We don’t just win your support. We win your enthusiasm. We win hearts and minds. We win a mandate to do what needs to be done to protect the American Idea.

It was perversely appropriate for Paul Ryan to deliver this speech, with those lines, on March 23: the six-year anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law. The Republican response to the ACA’s passage has been to scare people – you’ll lose your coverage and then probably be murdered by the death panel – and to oppose it without offering an alternative. There have been God knows how many votes to repeal or weaken the ACA in Paul Ryan’s House of Representatives over that six-year time period, but the number of legislative alternatives to Obamacare put forth by the GOP can be counted on zero fingers. The Republican policy during the Obama administration, on healthcare reform and pretty much every other issue area, has been to stoke fears and wring political benefit from unyielding opposition.

As I listened to Ryan's disingenuous speech yesterday, I couldn't help picturing Republicans (like my sister, for example) gushing over what a nice, sincere young man this Paul Ryan is. Sorry, folks, but I'm with Krugman: the guy's a con artist.

And the reason Ryan and the rest of the GOP establishment don't like Trump is that the arriviste is straying off the reservation on trade, taxes, entitlements, immigration, the Iraq war, etc. The Donald is just a con man who won't stay on script.