A "Ryan Roundup" ...

Love him or hate him, the "future of the Republican party", new poster-boy for conservative Catholic politics and vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan is in the news. A roundup of serious (and not-so-serious) commentary from recent days ...

• Assertion without Evidence Paul Zummo (The American Catholic) finds that "When it comes to Paul Ryan and his evil Randian ways," the usual requirement to marshal evidence for a serious argument is cast aside.

  Benjamin Wiker (National Catholic Register): The Paul Ryan-Ayn Rand Connection: What’s a Catholic to Think examines Ryan on Rand, and Rand herself, and finds that:

  Ayn Rand’s philosophy, then, is a mix — good and bad. But the bad is really bad, so that whatever good there is would have to be carefully extracted. To be perfectly frank, I find Ayn Rand to be deeply repulsive — the dark side is, again, really dark. So, if Paul Ryan wants to attract Catholic voters, he’s going to have to make much clearer what he’s taking — and even more, what he’s leaving behind.

  As Ryan said recently in his own words:

  I am nothing close to an objectivist, but I do think Ayn Rand did a service, did a great job of outlining the morality of capitalism, of making the moral case for freedom, free enterprise and capitalism. You don’t have to buy into all the objectivist stuff to appreciate what she did on that front.”

  Personally, while Ryan's professed appreciation of Ayn Rand extends well beyond "when he was young", if he now repudiates Rand's "objectivism" and atheism, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt. I'm sure we haven't heard the last on this topic and it will be interesting to see what Ryan himself has to say in the months ahead.

• Dolan: Ryan Is a ‘Great Public Servant’ Kathryn Jean Lopez (National Review) talks with Cardinal Dolan of New York about his friendship and correspondence with Rep. Paul Ryan.

• Responding to Michael Sean Winters (National Catholic Reporter), Linda Bridges (National Review) on Paul Ryan's alleged "dissent" from Catholic social teaching.

• Robert Costa on Paul Ryan's Mentor. (NRO, 8-15-12). (And no, it's not Ayn Rand).

Paul Ryan on Abortion

• On the matter of abortion - here is Ryan himself: The Cause of Life Can’t be Severed from the Cause of Freedom (Paul Ryan's congressional website, September 10, 2010):

  ... after America has won the last century’s hard-fought struggles against unequal human rights in the forms of totalitarianism abroad and segregation at home, I cannot believe any official or citizen can still defend the notion that an unborn human being has no rights that an older person is bound to respect. I do know that we cannot go on forever feigning agnosticism about who is human. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” The freedom to choose is pointless for someone who does not have the freedom to live. So the right of “choice” of one human being cannot trump the right to “life” of another. How long can we sustain our commitment to freedom if we continue to deny the very foundation of freedom—life—for the most vulnerable human beings?

• And here is a detailed survey of Ryan's voting record on abortion. (Ryan carries a 100% rating from the National Right to Life.

Presumptive vice presidential nominee for the Republican party Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) hold a campaign event and makes a speech at The Villages in Florida, accompanied by his mother -- a small business owner and Medicare recipient.

On Reforming Medicare

• The Return of Mediscare (The Editors, National Review)

• Grasping the Medicare Distortion, by Yuvan Levin (NRO, 8-12-12):

  Medicare will not be the central issue of this fall’s campaign — economic growth and jobs are far more important to voters. But President Obama and his supporters seem intent on distracting voters from the failed economic policies of the past four years by scaring them about the Romney-Ryan Medicare reform. And it is already perfectly clear that their criticisms of that reform are based on either a misapprehension or an intentional misrepresentation of the actual proposal, and of the very significant ways in which it differs from past Medicare-reform ideas (including those proposed by Ryan in the past). So it is worth taking a moment to understand the proposal — generally known as the Ryan-Wyden reform after its originators, Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon — and to see what its critics are missing or misrepresenting. ...

• Fact-Checking the Obama Campaign's Defense of its $716 Billion Cut to Medicare, by Avik Roy (The Apothecary). Avik's blog has been a recent discovery and proven to be interesting reading, unpacking -- for the non-statistically and economically minded like myself -- the difficult topics of Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), and consumer-driven health care. (Full disclosure: he's a fellow of the Manhattan Institute and an outside consultant to the Romney campaign).
• More Mediscare, by James Capretta and Yuval Levin. (Weekly Standard) A Harvard Journal of the American Medical Association study "turns out to offer one of the strongest cases yet published in favor of premium support."

• The $6,400 Myth: Breaking down a false Obama Medicare claim (Wall Street Journal 8-19-12):

  One of President Obama's regular attacks on Paul Ryan's Medicare reform is that it would force seniors to pay $6,400 a year more for health care. But merely because he keeps repeating this doesn't mean it's in the same area code of accurate.

• The Republican Medicare Equation: The Best Defense = A Good Offense + Lots of Paul Ryan - Pete Spiliakos (Postmodern Conservative) believes the best thing the GOP can do to counter Democrat criticism is to let Ryan be Ryan.

... and on a comical note

• Admit It, I Scare The Ever-Loving S*** Out Of You, Don't I? - a faux-editorial to The Onion 8-13-2012 . . . cutting a little too close to reality for some Democrats. [Warning: profanity]:

  Face it: I’m not some catastrophe waiting to happen, like a Sarah Palin or a Dan Quayle. On the contrary, you have the exact opposite fear. I’m a solid, competent, some might say exceptional, politician.

• Democrat Erskine Bowles praises Paul Ryan And His Budget Plan - A video of former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, Democratic co-chair of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, praising Ryan's budget plan.
• HEY GIRL ... IT'S PAUL RYAN.