GOP's Nerdy Special Weapon... Just Does Whatever Jonah Goldberg's Book Tells Him

Ever since Barack Obama called on the GOP's ranking House budget committee member, Paul Ryan, for a question about health care, and the question was somewhat coherent, Paul Ryan has been considered the smartest Republican in world history, currently. He uses nerd words like "costs" and "Medical inflation," in sentences! And if he's so smart, that would make his "ideas guy,"  National Reviewskid mark Jonah Goldberg, extra double-smart, times fifty. Which we knew already.

Ryan said his vote for the bailout was influenced by Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, a popular book among conservatives that argues that Nazism and other fascist movements were actually left wing in origin, and his belief that a second Depression would threaten capitalism—and rescue Obama's presidency.

"I'm a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP... represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral," he said. "I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system."

How did he learn all of this from a book composed entirely of X-ratedStar Warspencil doodles?

 Paul Ryan's Sacred Cow Slaughter [Daily Beast]