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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Thought Crimes and Misdemeanors

Jeremy Lott makes an odd statement: “Paul Ryan for vice president.” Just a few years ago, those words were practically a thought crime. A few years ago, this thought would never have occurred to anyone. Until 2010, practically no one was seriously talking about Ryan as vice presidential or presidential material, and there weren’t very […]

Jeremy Lott makes an odd statement:

“Paul Ryan for vice president.” Just a few years ago, those words were practically a thought crime.

A few years ago, this thought would never have occurred to anyone. Until 2010, practically no one was seriously talking about Ryan as vice presidential or presidential material, and there weren’t very many promoting this idea until after the 2010 midterms. To take one measure of what conservative activists were thinking a few years ago, Ryan’s name didn’t come up in 2009 CPAC straw poll. Why would it have? Just a few months earlier, Ryan had cast a vote for the TARP, which was a piece of legislation so loathed among Tea Party activists and small-government conservatives that it was widely (and wrongly) assumed back then that any Republican who voted for it had sabotaged his future political ambitions. A few years ago, Paul Ryan represented part of what was wrong with the Bush-era Republican Party. Now all of that is down the memory hole, or it is easily forgiven because Ryan insists that next time it will be different. In a few more months, it probably will be considered some sort of thought crime among conservatives to point out that Ryan’s record on fiscal responsibility is terrible.

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