More apropos it could not be than to introduce the vice presidential nominee of the fantasy party by placing two classic Republican chicken hawks who never served, yet are boosters for every war to come along and fond of every sort of rhetorical bellicosity, in front of a Navy vessel, emblematic of a campaign even less seaworthy than the decommissioned U.S.S. Wisconsin behind them.

The party that says stimulus doesn’t grow the economy, budget cutting does, that claims human caused global warning doesn’t exist as historic drought devastates the corn crop, that says taxes are too high when they are historically low, that says government doesn’t create jobs at the same time the gutting of government payrolls stokes the unemployment rate, that says the government should be getting smaller while the population continues to grow and the world’s complexity too, the party that proposes 18^th century government for the 21st century and has turned the founding fathers into Ludwig Von Mises has just the right nominee for Vice-president.

While Ryan may be Wolf Blitzer’s idea of a brainiac he really isn’t very bright at all if his budget proposals are any indication. And his adolescent’s infatuation with the juvenilia known as Ayn Rand’s Objectivism isn’t a confidence builder either. As I noted in my previous post, Paul Ryan, Visitor from Space, despite all the punditocracy’s banal touting of his seriousness, a less intellectually serious individual than Paul Ryan one would be hard-pressed to find. The budget proposal known as the Ryan Plan is perhaps the most fantastical document ever put forward by an American official. Among other things, Ryan claims he would magically reduce the budget by closing 700 billion yearly in budgetary loopholes, though he doesn’t actually mention a single one. That’s right: Mr. Serious proposes reducing the budget by closing loopholes though neglects to identify even a single one. This penchant for florid unreality is what makes him the lofty thinker the ideologically around-the-bend Republican base adores.

If all that isn’t fantastical enough, Ryan’s plan, according to CBO, has all non-health care, non-Social Security spending falling to 4.5 percent of GDP by 2040, and to 3.5 by 2050. Of course defense spending alone never has been less than 3 percent since before the last world war, and get this: Ryan claims he won’t lay a hand on the pentagon budget. Cue the Twilight Zone music maestro. Indeed, the party that inhabits a magic land where reducing revenue makes the deficit smaller, socialism and government are synonyms, the safety net is there for the shredding, workers are the non-producing dregs, consumers are expendable and exploitable in a consumer-driven American economy and plantation economics and feudalism are the way of progress, has its antediluvian hero of the future in Paul Ryan.

The fantasy party has always claimed its policies would reduce both the size of government and reduce the debt, though presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush, with the latter’s Republican congress increased both. Of course, such concrete results haven’t dented the Republican fantasy that it is the party of fiscal responsibility. Since concrete facts aren’t making an impact perhaps it’s time to switch to actual concrete.