Why Paul Ryan Opposes Divisive Politics

Why Paul Ryan Opposes Divisive Politics

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/why-paul-ryan-opposes-divisive-politics.html

By Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine

SNIP.............


Unity rather than division sounds very nice. Ryan has a specific meaning for that concept, though, that would seem to preclude any challenge to his ideas. In a recent interview with John Harwood, Ryan made it clear that he believes President Obama practices the kind of “identity politics” he deems bad for the country:

The kind of politics that I abhor, that I reject, which I think the president has played very successfully, is identity politics. Politics that I think, at the end of the day, is paternalistic and condescending. Politics that speaks to people in ways that divide them from one another, that divides people in this country.

Ryan further explained that even consulting distributional estimates, which measures the effect any given policy has on people at different income levels, is unacceptable:

I think most people don't think, "John's success comes at my expense." Or, "my success comes at your expense." People don't think like that. People want to know the deck is fair. Bernie Sanders talks about that stuff. That's not who we are.

If you favor policies that would maximize the income of a very tiny proportion of the electorate while coming at the direct expense of subsidies for a far larger proportion of the electorate, then any frank analysis of the distributional analysis of your policies is highly inconvenient. The problem is not only that it’s “divisive”; it’s that it divides the electorate in such a way as to leave Ryan with the smaller half.



..............SNIP