Okay… so I whiffed on the McDonnell pick as a clear close runner up to Rep. Paul Ryan as the Romney VP pick. I had a set of about 14 different criteria that I shared with skeptical editors here at Bearing Drift in a move that pushes virtually every chip to the center.
No one believed that the announcement was coming this week, either. But Bearing Drift quickly became a prophet in that regard as well. So we got half the story before anyone else.
Bottom line is that the VP pick came down to two candidates: Ryan and McDonnell. Either would have done a fantastic job, and though I would have loved to have seen Governor McDonnell earn the nod, if a guy is gonna be wrong…
That’s the way to do it.
One more thing before the left goes screaming off the Ryan-is-an-objectivist cliff. Ryan may have been enamored with objectivism back in 2005, but then again Barack Obama was enamored with Jeremiah Wright back in 2005 too. Folks change… and Ryan’s change came in the form of a reawakening of his Catholic faith:
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.
Longtime reader will– well I take that back. Folks merely winged by my political opinions know how much I viscerally hate Randian objectivism. Were Ryan an objectivist, I would not support this ticket even in the slightest degree. Paul Ryan today in contrast is the quintessential Catholic candidate — pro-life, pro-Rerum Novarum, pro-free markets, and pro-subsidiarity.
If the liberals use Rand against Ryan, then they are giving conservatives the green light to use Wright against Obama.
Just sayin’.
Let’s recognize this as well: Americans now finally have the contrast of ideas we were looking for. On one side, we have free marketeers and a budget that dismantles the welfare state and begins to rescue America from the fate of Greece or Zimbabwe. On the other hand, we have a president bent on socializing American industry and services driving us over a fiscal cliff much as we see in Europe. No longer do we have to quibble about R/D/I splits and MOEs and who-killed-who-with-cancer…
…the fight is on.
May the best vision for America win.
