Paul Ryan’s “Businessman” Opponent Has Done No Business

Another coup for WISN radio’s Dan O’Donnell, hard on the heels of an excellent investigative piece piece on violence in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Now we find that Paul Nehlen, the “businessman” who is opposing Paul Ryan in the Republican primary, has a web page, but with no contact information. And his “business” appears to have no revenue, and no employees. This according to government records.


The key documents can be found here.

Ryan has angered some conservatives for being, as Speaker of the House, unable to seriously dent Obama policy initiatives. Of course, when you control the House, but lack a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and have a Democrat president, and are convinced that a government shutdown would be politically disastrous, there are limits to what you can do.

Trump supporters are likewise unhappy with Ryan’s tepid (at best) support for their guy. But if Nehlen is the best his critics can do, Ryan has little to fear.

Leftist “Catholic” Academics Plan Another Attack on Paul Ryan

The following is from an e-mail sent out to Marquette Theology Faculty:

From: Theological Studies Editor

Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2012 6:48 PM

To: Theo-Faculty Subject: FW: statement in advance of the Ryan/Biden debate--please sign if you can

From: Charles Camosy [mailto:ccamosy@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 12:16 PM

To: Charles Camosy

Subject: statement in advance of the Ryan/Biden debate--please sign if you can

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please consider signing the following statement (via the link below) that Vince Miller, Jana Bennett, David Cloutier, Meghan Clark, and I put together this week. We worked hard to give this document the best chance we could to be signed by a diverse group of Catholics. It is not an attack on Paul Ryan, and we are careful not to make judgments about his personal character or honesty, but we do believe that this coming week presents an important teachable moment when it comes to Catholic Social Doctrine.

We’d like to get it out (in a signed form) a couple of days before the Vice Presidential debate, so please sign soon if you are able--and please also pass it onto others who fit the description below and you think might be interested.

Thanks so much,

Charlie

This statement is intended primarily for theologians and other Catholic academics knowledgeable and concerned about Catholic social thought and doctrine.

If you would like to sign, please click on this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dEtjY0dleWhRVFU3NGJFLTFCZWxpdmc6MQ

***

We write as Catholic theologians, academics and ministers concerned for our nation and for the integrity of the teachings of the Catholic Church. We write to hold up aspects of the Church’s social doctrine that are profoundly relevant to the challenges our nation faces at this moment in history, yet are in danger of being ignored.

A Tipping Point:

America is at a tipping point where the traditional commitment of our government to protecting and advancing the common good is in very real danger of being dismantled for generations. Members of the “Tea Party,” libertarians, Ayn Rand followers and other proponents of small government have brought libertarian views of government into the mainstream; legitimating forms of social indifference. After decades of anti-government rhetoric and “starve the beast” tax cuts, some even appear to exploit predictable fiscal problems to establish a privatized, libertarian order that reduces society to a collection of individuals and shrinks the common good to fit the outcomes achievable by private, for profit firms.

And it goes on from there.

The point, quite clearly, is to put up some flack that can be used against Paul Ryan in advance of his debate with Joe Biden. It has apparently been sent out to academics all over the country in the hope of gaining a lot of signatures.

The letter invokes Catholic Social Teaching to attack Ryan, accusing him of having too little concern for the poor.

Of course, Catholic Social Teaching does insist on concern for the poor, but whether the trillion dollars the U.S. now spends on means-tested programs for the poor is too little, about the right amount, or too much is not something that Catholic Social Teaching can specify. It’s a matter of prudential judgment.

Paul Ryan’s judgment is not that the amount should be cut, but that increases should be limited. In the eyes of these leftist academics, that makes him a bad Catholic.

But as we have pointed out, the people who sign these kinds of letters (and most certainly the people who signed the previous anti-Ryan letter) seem to have a commitment to Catholic Social Teaching only when it can be used to attack Republicans. If the issue is abortion, or gay marriage, it’s a very different matter.

Interestingly, the e-mail was sent out to Theology faculty by the journal Theological Studies. Is it appropriate for that journal to endorse a partisan polemic? That’s something we’ll follow up on tomorrow.

[Update]

David G. Schultenover, S.J., editor of Theological Studies, has e-mailed us saying “I don’t know how this solicitation got sent out with my return address. Theological Studies is not endorsing this solicitation.”

It would be grossly inappropriate for the journal to do so, and they did not.

Paul Ryan As Vice Presidential Candidate

We’ve been sharing our opinions about the choice of Paul Ryan to be Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate with a large portion of the local media, so perhaps fairness demands that we share them with the readers of this blog.

We were convinced that Romney would pick a boring white guy as a running mate. That seemed to be the safe choice. Romney’s strategy was to make the election a referendum on Obama’s economic performance, and selecting a running mate with a high policy profile seemed to detract from that. Ryan appeared to be a lightning rod. It was too easy to see the Democratic commercials with Ryan (and then Romney) pushing Grandma off the cliff.

And, until this past Saturday, Romney has been anything but bold.

So we were surprised. Shocked would be too strong, but only slightly.

But we political scientists can usually explain things after they happen, even if we can’t predict them beforehand.

So it may have been relevant that Romney’s former strategy did not seem to be working. Obama chronically led in the polls. Given the state of the economy, he should not have. But he did.

So if you can’t win by making the election a referendum on the incumbent, why not make it a battle of rival political philosophies? That’s what the Ryan pick did. It is a high-risk choice, but just might have a high reward.

At first glance, it seems that the Romney campaign will have a major problem selling the Ryan budget to the public. In no democracy do people like to be told that the goodies they are getting from government are unsustainable, and must be taken back. Not that the Ryan budget takes back much. Mostly it just limits the growth of government. But in politics, that translates as a “cut.” If a program now costs 300 billion dollars, and it projected to cost 500 billion dollars in four years, and somebody proposes to limit it to 400 billion, that’s a 100 billion “cut.”

Even in Greece, where the gross over-extension of the welfare state has gone much further than here, voters are having trouble accepting that they can’t have all the goodies they want from government. They riot. They blame international bankers. When the Germans refuse to bail them out, they trot out allusions to Nazism.

It’s not that the specifics of the Ryan plan are that toxic. Once one explains to people that it won’t affect anybody older than age 55, that doesn’t seem so bad. The idea that old people will get to buy insurance from competing private insurance companies doesn’t seem too bad either – everybody buys auto insurance that way.

But the question is whether anybody will pay much attention to the specifics. Seniors, remember, oppose Obamacare in virtually every poll. That’s not so much because they are conservative as because they are risk averse. Any change threatens to make things worse, regardless of what any politician says.

But the same risk aversion that causes seniors to oppose Obamacare will likely make them skeptical of Ryan’s proposals. It may not matter how patiently it is explained.

On the Other Hand

But there is an alternative scenario.

Sometimes the character and personality of a candidate can diffuse voter fears. It’s happened before. Ronald Reagan was portrayed by liberals as a reckless pro-military hawk who might start a nuclear war. But his amiable and easy-going mien in the debates with Jimmy Carter convinced people that he really wasn’t a rash war monger.

This was in sharp contrast with Barry Goldwater, who joked about lobbing a nuclear bomb into the men’s room of the Kremlin. Goldwater was sufficiently stern and even harsh in his comportment to make it all too easy to fear what he might do in a crisis.

This is why Ryan’s likability might just give the Romney/Ryan ticket a chance.

Ryan, as Rush Limbaugh put it, “may well be the last Boy Scout.” It will be hard to believe that he would do anything nasty to seniors, or that the limits he proposes for means tested programs are the result of callousness toward the poor – as opposed to a genuine concern with rapidly increasing dependency in this nation.

Add to this the fact that the Ryan choice seems to have energized the Romney campaign, and indeed to have energized Romney himself, who now seems to be speaking with vigor and energy. This may have been a brilliant choice.

But Then, On the Other Hand

But then, it may have been a monumental blunder. Perhaps a couple of additional months of bad economic news would have finally put Romney in the lead. Romney has been raising lots of money, and perhaps the ads it could buy would have turned the tide.

But for better or worse, Romney has produced a bold, make-or-break choice.

Marquette Campus Leftists Attack Paul Ryan Budget

Not news: a bunch of mostly leftist faculty recently signed a letter attacking Paul Ryan’s budget plan. The Journal-Sentinel puffed the story as though college faculty being liberal and opposed to Republicans really was news.

Now what is news: a majority of those faculty who signed the letter also signed petitions to recall Scott Walker, according to Entitlement Mentality Monitor.

In spite of the use of the language of Catholic social justice teaching, the impetus behind the letter was merely your standard liberal-left politics.

Although there were some exceptions (one person whose name was on the letter opposed the hiring of lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien, and was attacked for it) the list of signers is laced with people who oppose Catholic teaching on abortion, oppose Catholic teaching on homosexuality, favor gay marriage, and only use the phrase “social justice” to promote a liberal political agenda.

One piece of evidence of this can be seen by comparing the list of people who signed the letter attacking Ryan with a letter signed by dozens of Marquette faculty in the wake of the refusal of Marquette to hire an outspoken lesbian (and opponent of Church teaching) as Dean of Arts and Sciences. Signing this letter were twenty of the same people who signed the anti-Ryan letter.

Indeed, the anti-Ryan letter was signed by faculty who are at the forefront of the gay lobby on campus, including Nancy Snow and Ed de St. Aubin. Indeed, if one omits eleven faculty in Theology who signed the anti-Ryan letter but not the pro-lesbian dean letter, almost half (20 of 41) of the faculty who signed the anti-Ryan letter also signed the pro-lesbian dean letter.

Add to this the fact that some Theology faculty who did not sign the lesbian dean letter are quite leftist and politically correct. Brian Massingale, for example, is a promoter of the notion of “white privilege,” a concept designed to guilt or intimidate whites into accepting a whole array of leftist policies — on pain of being labeled a defender of “white privilege.” Robert L. Masson likewise uses the same strategy in his classes to promote a narrow leftist policy agenda. In fact, Masson uses Massingale’s book in his class.

Which puts into perspective the claim of the anti-Ryan letter to be reflecting Catholic social teaching. At a place like Marquette, Catholic teaching is virtually always invoked to support a liberal agenda — more government programs, more social spending, more income redistribution — and virtually never to support a ban on abortion, or upholding heterosexual marriage.

The people who sign such letters, in other words, are (with a few exceptions) merely liberals or leftists. The “Catholic” stuff is just window dressing.