It’s getting French Revolution-y out there. Mitt Romney is facing villagers with pitchforks, restless natives keep decapitating moderates like Dick Lugar and even new idols like Paul Ryan are being pushed toward the tumbrel.
Lugar’s downfall is more 2010 Tea Party guillotining of long-time Republicans, but a search for ideological purity is so intense that even Ryan is forced to disavow his political patron saint Ayn Rand for being “an outspoken atheist [who]… felt altruism was evil, supported abortion and condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor.”
An irony of Ryan’s retreat is the questioner who forced it could have been attacking him from the right or left, either representing Religious extremists or moderates not in harmony with Randian uber-selfishness. As in the unfortunate French unpleasantness of the past, the people’s tribunals are getting caught up more in the desire for blood than justice.
Ryan, who told voters in 2005 that “the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” now backpedals to “Just because you like someone’s novels doesn’t mean you agree with their entire worldview philosophy. She has a worldview philosophy which is completely antithetical to mine because she has an atheist philosophy…”
So much for hero worship…