Paul Ryan and the art of whiny resentment

By Jonathan Bernstein on Salon:

I don't think that Paul Ryan is running for president; I really don't think he'll ever run for president. But if he does, he sure has the resentment thing down cold...

Bernstein goes after Ryan for his comments in a National Review Online interview, in which he said, among other things, of President Obama:

 "This is, unfortunately, the way he operates," Ryan says. "This is his pattern of behavior, this is his personality. For the next 18 months, it will probably be like this. It’ll be in-your-face class warfare, with bitter appeals to envy, fear, and anxiety, plus the demonization of the other side’s motives."

To which Bernstein replies:

This is whiny, crybaby, thin-skinned crap. "In-your-face class warfare"? Never happened. "Demonization of the other side's motives"? Find me a quotation, in context; it had better be at least as good as Ryan's claim that Obama is deliberately willing to inflict harm on the nation in service of "ideology." "Bitter appeals to envy, fear, and anxiety"? In Looking-Glass Land, only -- the one where inventing a "looming debt crisis" doesn't count as a scare tactic, but discussing the obvious consequences of not raising the debt ceiling does. Or, in which voting to transform Medicare into a voucher program constitutes supporting Medicare, while not doing that counts as destroying it.

There's more at Salon.