This is a sanity check appeal to any DailyKos members who have the intestinal fortitude to occasionally listen to RW Talk Radio.
I live in So Cal and was commuting home from work. It would have been the 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock hour between M 8/13 to W 8/15, just after Romney made Paul Ryan his running mate.
One of the right wing talk show hosts was doing a radio interview with Paul Ryan. Midway into the interview, the host began an oft-heard line of BS that Republicans “argue with facts,” but our side resorts to name calling and believes Republicans are “evil”. Then the host asked Ryan how do you deal with opponents who think you are evil?
It is at this point that Ryan invokes Machiavelli and I thought it was a really dumb and frightening response.
What I thought I heard Ryan say is, essentially, when you know that your party is on the side of Right (doing the Lord’s work so to say), sometimes you have to be Machiavellian (which I read as “be immoral or deceitful”) to achieve the greater good of your cause.
I could not believe that a VP candidate could be so comfortable to say that even to a friendly audience, and it stuck in my mind. I remember searching DKos that night to see if anyone diaried the topic, and then did a more general google search but nothing came up.
I have scoured the internet for audio of the interview. The closest thing I found was a Hannity interview on 8/15 but there is no reference to Machiavelli unless they scrubbed that part of the audio.
Here is the interview link: Hannity Aug 15, 2012 Interview w/Paul Ryan
What other hosts could have interviewed Ryan on those days? It could have been Dennis Prager or Mike Gallagher. Maybe Mark Levin, but I don’t think so because, well, I am generally a holistic person and Mark Levin would require some Big Pharma blood pressure meds.
If anyone remembers this interview, please help me. I have a diary I'd like to write about Ryan and Machiavelli, but I don’t want to attribute anything to Paul Ryan that he didn’t really say. It is one thing for someone else to ascribe your politics as Machiavellian, but for Ryan to ascribe it to himself, is pretty telling.
Please, if anyone else remembers this interview and knows the host, date and time, please comment. And if you can find a link to a transcript or the actual audio that would be bonus!