You've simply got to read Jennifer Rubin's piece in which she pretends to anguish that Mitt Romney's greatest challenge is choosing between "Ronald Reagan’s growth message that lifted him to victory in 1980" and Paul Ryan's " 'recent [obsession] about entitlement debt bombs and deficit reduction.' "
In Jennifer's Republican-perfected cosmos, there of course must have been some exculpatory method behind the angelic Ryan's madness. And aren't we all relieved to find that indeed there was: "Part of this was a proactive strike at the Democrats," observes the sleuthing Rubin, "whom they knew would play the Mediscare card against Romney-Ryan." (Insert hiss here.)
But not to worry. Jennifer dives into an orgy of name-dropping and comes up grasping consultations with and calls to and emails from "the quintessential pro-market, pro-growth Republican" Larry Kudlow and "fiscal conservative" Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth's Barney Keller and "conservative economist" Doug Holtz-Eakin, all of whom assure Ms. Rubin that "her fear is unfounded."
I'll abridge Ms. Rubin's relief: Mr. Ryan will postpone the national debt's extermination until Day Two, thus permitting Mr. Romney to achieve full employment on Day One.
However. Jennifer. Concludes. "The Republicans' economic message is not simplistic"--which is one of those Rubinesque proclamations intended to shamelessly dazzle so as to shortcircuit the neuro-impulse to drool. No, it is not "simplistic," intones Rubin, it is "necessary."
And there you have it, my weekly snapshot of "Jennifer Rubin: Conservative Intellectual," at work and at play.
Regular readers of Rubin will have observed that it is mainly her head that is Rubi(e)nesque. The capacious rectum is implied.
Posted by: Peter G | August 28, 2012 at 11:34 AM