Buzz about Rep. Paul Ryan as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney is growing louder. As Politico notes, while many conservatives think that he would be an inspired choice, offering Romney a chance to show his resolve on entitlement reform, other GOPers apparently worry that he would be a risky pick, enabling Democrats to switch the subject from the state of the economy to the future of Medicare.
Another risk with Ryan is the congressman’s record of affection for the controversial libertarian writer Ayn Rand.
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The late Rand, who was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum to Jewish parents in St. Petersburg, Russia, espoused a philosophy known as Objectivism, which celebrated self-interest and laissez faire capitalism and opposed altruism.
Ryan had a long record of praise for Rand and her influence on him, though earlier this year he attempted to distance himself from her ideas. He dismissed as an “urban legend” the notion that he was an Ayn Rand devotee: “I reject her philosophy,” which he described as “atheist” and “completely antithetical to mine.”
Yet an audio recording quickly turned up of a 2005 speaking engagement in which Ryan stated that her novels were “required reading” in his office and said: “"But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."
While Rand certainly has her acolytes (former Fed chief Alan Greenspan was one of them), many conservatives have found her ideas to be noxious. The late National Review editor William F. Buckley was decidedly not a fan.
If Ryan ends up as Romney’s pick, one can expect liberals to take aim at him over his past praise for Rand, as indeed they already have. Some left-leaning Christians went after Ryan last year, suggesting that his budget reflected Rand’s philosophy rather than Jesus’ teachings, as the Forward reported. (At the time, some observers told the Forward that they doubted the issue would influence the budget debate.)
On a side note, Rand had indicated strong support for Israel is its conflict with its Arab neighbors, the latter of whom she dismissed in a 1979 television appearance as “almost totally primitive savages.”
