If we don't quickly play up the Paul Ryan - Ayn Rand connection, we have only ourselves to blame...

This is really an amazing opportunity we've been handed. Although lots of modern-day Republicanism has been based on Rand's "thought," the G.O.P. has always been careful to distance its leadership from a connection with someone whose opinions, however championed by an extreme minority, remain toxic to the average American.

Voters of a religious bent, who still make up a sizable majority in this country, will likely be offended by Rand's militant atheism and insistence that religious teachings, no matter their content, are inherently evil. (And some might well wonder how a political figure who claims to be a devout Catholic can champion someone with such total contempt for what should be his bedrock beliefs.) But even those more secular are like as not to be repulsed by Rand's insistence that "rational" selfishness is the only moral behavior, that altruism is always immoral, and that those who are not wealthy, powerful, physically-beautiful exponents of her philosophy are contemptible sheep who thoroughly deserve their certain doom.

One of Rand's traditional comebacks is that people's revulsion toward her and her philosophy is a badge of honor, because such people, unable to rebut her self-evidently true ideas, resort to hysterical, unthinking appeals to emotion to avoid facing facts and admitting that her philosophy is truly rational. In one sense, she's right -- not about her philosophy being rational, or that it cannot be logically rebutted, because it certainly and rather easily can. But in that most people, even before getting to the stage of rationally finding the flaws in her arguments, are struck with the gut feeling that her philosophy is "cruel" and "evil." (And, at the risk of temporarily finding myself in agreement with George W. Bush, sometimes intuitive reactions are dead-on.) As I said before, however much the Republican agenda has been influenced by Ayn Rand for the past thirty or more years, the G.O.P. has always been careful to distance themselves from her teachings. For once, this is now impossible. If we don't play this up, immediately -- before people have had a chance to absorb the G.O.P. spinmeisters' presentation of Ryan -- and tar him with the Rand brush in the minds of the voters, we thoroughly deserve a loss in November, for this is an opportunity to ensure the Republican ticket is as toxic as she has long been to the majority of Americans.