"Cruel Conservatives Throw a Masquerade Ball" by MAUREEN DOWD at the NY Times

[applegrove]

Cruel Conservatives Throw a Masquerade Ball

By MAUREEN DOWD at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/dowd-cruel-conservatives-throw-a-masquerade-ball.html?_r=1

"SNIP......................................

Given the president’s lackluster performance and the listless economy, Romney should be killing it. But he’s an odd duck running with a dissimulating striver. Ryan’s harsh stances toward women, the old and the poor are on record, so he set a new standard for gall when he intoned, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.”

The convention rebranding as compassionate conservatives is encouraging in that it shows that Republicans feel they are at a disadvantage with their Ayn Rand disdain for altruism, their Kempian trickle-down economics stripped of the humanity of Jack Kemp, their worship of the wealthy as the engine of economic prosperity.

Expected to draw Catholic votes, Ryan has been forced to renounce the atheist, Russian-born Rand, but he channeled her when he talked about wanting to define his own happiness, adding, “That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

Ryan’s lies and Romney’s shape-
shifting are so easy to refute that they must have decided a Hail Mary pass of artifice was better than their authentic ruthless worldview.
......................................SNIP"