That one thing about Paul Ryan that everyone has seen

by: Eric B.

Wed Oct 10, 2012 at 16:50:07 PM EDT

There are two things in Paul Ryan's aborted interview with a TV-12 (Flint) that are entirely uncontroversial. Here's a Huffington Post wrap-up that's missing some stuff, but it's better than MLive's coverage, which is viewed through the prism of a Rachel Maddow tantrum.

The first is that there's nothing odd at all about Ryan not saying that Obama wants to confiscate people's firearms. Paul Ryan's entire media celebrity is built off being a class warrior instead of a culture warrior. Gun confiscation is something the cultural warriors do (in fact, their prescription for worsening violence is to increase the number of people who are carrying firearms); the class warriors look like adults by skipping past all of it and instead focusing on the class warfare stuff, which is even worse. When Tim Walberg says that Eric Holder connived to have federal agents slain so he cojuld take away firearms, Paul Ryan says, "That's crazy talk ... know what's not crazy talk? The federal debt, that's what." And, the media elite fawns and swoons because finally they've found an adult in the Republican Party, and the media loves it some adult in the Republican Party.

The other is that there is nothing big about suggesting that a good way to reduce urban crime rates is through expanded access to opportunity. As I noted the other day, we've had 200 years of declining rates of violence in "The West" and one of the factors sociologists theorize is responsible is an economic strategy that spreads prosperity as widely as possible. It's not weird or even inaccurate to suggest that this is the case, because there are factual reasons to believe it.

The problem, as noted by the interviewer, is that there is nothing about Paul Ryan's favorite policy proposal that suggests that it would do that. Paul Ryan wants to cut taxes, which is supposed to propel "job creators" to create jobs. It hasn't happened and urban crime rates are getting worse despite the fact that this has been our strategy since Reagan was in office. In other words, the policy prescription Paul Ryan is most closely associated with doesn't do what he thinks needs to be done. It's not just warranted to ask him why he still thinks it would work; it's why we have a media in the first place.

If you watched, you probably also noted that nonsense about how urban youth need to be taught how to be of good character and proper morals and stuff. Paul Ryan in that fashion reduces himself to a bad caricature, a modern-day Randolph Duke, betting that simply by sitting down a child from a crime-ridden neighborhood and providing an afternoon's instruction into how to behave like a proper Christian gentleman that he, too, can become a successful commodities broker.