Is Mitt Romney the best of all possible GOP candidates?

Many of the design principles for the insurance market exchanges in the Affordable Care Act were based on unproven, discredited, and frankly absurd conservative notions about the economagic of free markets. But too many liberals refused to acknowledge this until they saw Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney make the same arguments.

The opposition to a pair of copyright protection bills that could lead to Internet censorship has grown over the past week. The Online News Association delivered its opposition to the bills, joining the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the State Department is backing off, and the GOP’s Paul Ryan has announced his opposition. But there’s little mainline news coverage.

Politifact won the “Pompous Response to Criticism of the Year” award yesterday for their rebuttal to criticism about their awarding of the Lie of the Year to the correct claim by Democrats that Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget would end Medicare.

Politifact just told a whopper. It declared as a “lie” the fact that Paul Ryan’s proposal to transform Medicare from a government guaranteed benefit program to a voucher for private insurance that doesn’t guarantee benefits would not end Medicare. Politifact should have given the “lie of the year” award to itself.

Barney Frank’s questions about Big Conservative Government’s advocates’ unwavering and prurient interest in regulating pot and sex get no respect from co-panelists George “Gateway Drug” Will and Paul “I Smirk” Ryan. Then the Massachusetts Congressman gets totally shut down by lame duck anchor Christiane Amanpour, who’d prefer to return to her chosen topic of ‘social mobility’ than let Barney deftly pierce the inherent personal liberty contradictions of her guests’ preferred regulatory regime.

Barney Frank revels in the opportunity to speak directly to people who have no response but to smirk at him (Ryan) or to ask for another several decades of pot research before making up their minds whether it’s a gateway drug (Will).

In a surprise move, Paul Ryan found a Democratic partner to propose a new Medicare plan that does not fully privatize it, but instead keeps fee-for-service Medicare as an option alongside a premium support plan. This is the same proposal that the front-running Republican Presidential candidates have made.

Republican Governor Scott Walker has proposed a new policy “to require future protesters to pay in advance to stage an event, at a cost of $50 per hour, per Capitol Police officer.” Not only would protesters be on the hook for that, but they would also possibly have to pay for liability insurance or bond and even the cost of cleanup following the protest.

The government has pursued a wide range of policies over the last three decades that have had the predicted and actual effect of redistributing income upward. For example, it has adopted a trade policy that drives down the wages of much of the working population by putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in Mexico and China and other developing countries. By contrast, the most highly paid professionals, like doctors and lawyers, are still largely protected from the same sort of competition.

Paul Ryan was asked about a CBO report showing that the top 1% managed to cope a whopping income raise over the last few decades. He worried that people might misuse the report to stop limit mobility and turn all of you into lazy hammock dwelling sponges. Huh.