Tears for Paul Ryan

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is squealing like a stuck pig. I guess the president must have done something right in his budget speech. What I love is the indignation that anyone would be mean to Rep. Paul Ryan.

Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan’s plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. “Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,” he said, supposedly pitting “children with autism or Down’s syndrome” against “every millionaire and billionaire in our society.” The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

Aren’t you just welling up with tears for poor Mr. Ryan? I mean, his feelings are really hurt:

Someone pass Budget Chairman Paul Ryan a tissue, because it appears President Barack Obama has broken his heart.

Reacting to Obama’s Wednesday speech on deficit reduction, Ryan said that he was first “excited,” then “naively optimistic,” then “disappointed,” then “sad” and finally, in the end, “sincerely disappointed.”

“I was excited when we got invited to attend his speech today,” Ryan, who authored the Republican budget proposal unveiled last week, said just hours after returning from George Washington University where he was given a front row seat for Obama’s address. “I thought the president’s invitation…was an olive branch. Instead, what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our countries fiscal challenges.”

If you watch the video of Ryan’s press conference it almost seems like he sincerely thought the president invited him to the speech in order to honor him in some way. If he truly believed that, that would be the saddest thing of all.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.