Paul Ryan, From Smartest To Meanest Guy In The Room

Paul Ryan has decided to run over poor school children, unemployed workers and other low-income Americans on a path to the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, and national media are getting in some heavy licks.

My guess is that Ryan loves seeing what he has so articulately engineered into mainstream print. These stories and columns will be trumpeted as badges of honor by righty talk shows and serve Ryan tactically because they help him separate from the crowded right-wing fringe.

You've got Walker and Cruz and Jindal and Palin and Trump and Huckabee and John Bolton and Rand Paul all trying to out-Right-flank each other for attention and Fox 'News' channel cred.

And be first among equals winning the Koch brothers/Sheldon Adelson/NRA lotteries, though few people wouldn't want judgements like these on their permanent records:

*  The LA Times says Ryan's recent broadside at the poor was a personal, political calculation:

Rep. Paul Ryan calls for cuts in anti-poverty programs

Welfare, child care, college grants are all under the House Republican's budget ax in a lengthy critique that returns Ryan to the national stage in advance of a possible 2016 presidential run.

Followed by:

*  A St. Patrick's weekend op-ed:

Paul Ryan’s Irish Amnesia

*  Also a take down by Nobel-prize winner and columnist Paul Krugman:

That Old-Time Whistle

*  This being Krugman's earlier slam:

The poverty hammock fallacy of Paul Ryan and GOP

Cross-posted at The Political Environment.