I guess journalism is really dead when commentators, even those who should know better, simply latch onto a description and pass it along without bothering to discover how apt (or inapt) it is.
Here’s some examples of Paul Ryan’s career as a “deep thinker” in Congress:
● Voted blindly for both Bush tax cuts, adding trillions to the deficit
● Voted blindly for Medicare Part D without the slightest plan for paying for it—more trillions in red ink
● Voted for both Bush wars, again unfunded, without warning that yet more trillions of taxpayer money was headed down the drain as a result
● Then, as soon as a Democrat was in the White House, began relentlessly screaming that the deficit, which he spent his entire career in Congress piling up, was “unsustainable”
● Proposed budget that robs from the poor, sick and elderly to fill all those holes he himself blew in the US Treasury.
Someone please tell me how this record suggests the work of an intellectual? To me it adds up to the output of the typical GOP party hack.