House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has made no secret of his admiration for Ayn Rand in the past. But as anyone who’s read Rand will tell you, there’s a big difference between a casual admirer and embracing her Objectivist philosophy wholesale. This point is especially difficult to get through to liberals, who tend to conflate one with the other, usually because pure, unleaded objectivism is politically toxic, whereas just thinking Rand has a point about free markets is not.

Paul Ryan has been a persistent victim of this red herring, and now has had to explain to the press that no, just because he happens to admire Rand, that doesn’t mean he agrees with her about absolutely everything ever:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”
Note the wording there. “If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas.” Here is a list of things Ryan is not saying:

1. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about economics.

2. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about politics.

3. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about ethics.

4. He thinks Ayn Rand is right about religion.

He is simply saying he rejects Rand’s epistemological claims, which is a very specific subset of philosophy. And indeed, many people (including and especially Roman Catholics like Paul Ryan) would reject that part of her philosophy in favor of Aquinas.

Unfortunately, the Left didn’t quite get that little bit of nuance. So Ryan’s spokesperson had to explain it to them:

Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert downplayed the lawmaker’s apparent change of tune on Rand.
“I wouldn’t make too much of this one way or another. Congressman Ryan was not ‘distancing himself’ from Rand, merely correcting several false storylines that are out there, such as the myth that he requires all of his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Saying he ‘rejects Ayn Rand’s philosophy’ was simply meant to correct a popular falsehood that Congressman Ryan is an Objectivist — he isn’t now and never claimed to be,” Seifert said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
However, this is not a change of tune, based on Ryan’s paper trail regarding Rand. Indeed, he has never claimed to agree with her on religion, or on epistemology. Most of his agreement comes down to sympathy with her individualism – an idea which she shares with any number of other people who explicitly rejected the rest of her philosophy. In short, Paul Ryan is not an objectivist. Nor did he ever claim to be.

Horseshit. Evangelicals aren't the only religious group in the country, and the religious right only came to exist in the '70s as an answer to the religious left's dominance in the '60s. Look at how political black churches tend to be, and the Democrats are far more in bed with them than Republicans are with the evangelicals. Howard Dean did make a play for the evangelicals when he was the head of the DNC, but they just weren't buying his line that the Democrats were a fundamentally pro-life party. Bottom line: the Democrats are perfectly happy to do all the things Republicans are stereotyped as doing - using God to justify their policies, questioning the other side's patriotism, and so on. Just listen to Pelosi blather on about how much she loves "The Word, the Word, the Word", or Obama talk about how Jesus would love his foreign policy and health care plan, or left wing religious groups like Catholics United talking about how our government should base its welfare programs on what Jesus would want. The idea they they do it with any less frequency or fervor than Republicans is a pure media construct with absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever.

Pretty much, yeah.

Did anyone other than the dumbasses who voted for that dork expect anything different?

It's how it's always been really, and now hilariously Mit Romney for not wanting to spend billions of dollars to track down one man and because Obama thought Romney would be unwilling to violate Pakistan's soverinty...

It's pure bizzaro zone territory.

The GOP had better end up clarifying what they view Rand is.  As it was, they were trumpeting Rand as something awesome.  Ryan even said Rand was suitable to provide a moral basis for capitalism.  These are his words.  I would also suggest people be careful what they are saying now, particularly yourself here.  As it is now, you have turned Ryan into some sort of ink blots to make him say what you want him to say.

A think about politics, ethics, and philosophy, is that, if you go around trumpeting a view as awesome to score points, and don't clarify the limitations when you can, then you open yourself up to being defined in ways that may not be correct.  Tooting the Rand horn was excellent to score political points, until it started to get a theological backlash.

You saw the start of this asking for clarification, if not outright denouncing of Rand happen, even back in 2011.  You can see one of individuals involved with compassionate conservatism end up addressing the issue here in this piece:

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18283

Take a stand against Rand

The religious left finds a real wedge issue | Marvin Olasky

(End of article):

Half a century ago two Christian conservative icons decried Atlas Shrugged. Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend, "I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail." Whittaker Chambers wrote in National Review, "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. . . . It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. . . . From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'"

And this, sadly, is the book that a budget expert I admire, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., recommends—apparently without caveat—and tells his staffers to read. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is also a Rand fan. This does not mean that they subscribe to her atheism: They may just be looking for a novel that shows young readers how capitalism turns individual self-interest into service to others, and in the process helps the poor far more than socialistic schemes do.

But Ryan and others, if they want support from Christians, cannot merely react to the left's criticism with a shrug: They should show what in Rand they agree with and what they spurn. The GOP's big tent should include both libertarians and Christians, but not anti-Christians.

In this article, Olasky goes into the problems with Rand, and why the GOP is asked to end up denouncing Rand and getting rid of her from GOP politics.  This has led to clarification and denouncing of aspects of Rand, if not most of it.  Back in 2009-2011 Rand was a big deal and trumpeted as awesome.  And that is the crux of what is happening with Paul Ryan now, and what is worth discussing.  Of course, good chance this will morph more into discuss Obama, so don't have to think about impact of Rand on GOP politics.  Distract, rather than focus, is easier, when you don't want people to look.

It is, at best, a token effort to throw support at it.  It isn't in the same league as what Rove did to push to organize evangelical churches to support GW Bush's reelection efforts.  It is just words, not a strategic targeting, like Rick Perry saying the GOP is the party of life, in response to an angry mob at a GOP debate.  You do have defaults, like black churches, but the evangelical wasn't really targeted in a meaningful way.  Reminded of a bit of politics that John Kerry did by dropping the Dick Cheney's daugher is a lesbian in a debate.  Just marginal stuff done in passing to say they tried.

THis article I posted prior goes into what has happened.  Reason why is there had been a lack of a wedge issue they could use:

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18283

For nearly a decade Democrats have sought a religious wedge issue that could separate big chunks of white evangelical voters from their Republican home. Now they've found it, and are thrusting at the Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand underbelly of American conservatism.

First, a bit of recent history: Democrats have not gained much white evangelical support on healthcare and environmentalism. In 2008 they successfully used guilt over segregation to elect the first African-American president, but that may not work again as concern over Obamanomics trumps the ghosts of generations past.

So, sorry if I will beleive Olasky over you on this issue.  And before you type impulsively here, it is best you find out who Olasky is and why I quote him.

"no independent thought"

Why do you consider it some kind of massive flip flop if Ryan agrees with Rand on economics and her moral justifications for capitalism but doesn't agree with her atheism or what people often interpret as her unfeeling rigidity?

Either way, I'm not really sure why Olasky is all bent out of shape about it, unless as an uber-Christian he just can't stand to see people saying something nice about a very un-Christian individual like Rand. But Olasky himself is probably best known for arguing that American anti-poverty programs have been ruinous, and although he later supported Bush's private-public partnerships and faith based initiatives, I remember him running away from those like a scalded dog as they foundered and came under fire.

That's rather arrogant of you. To be very frank, I probably know a lot more about Marvin Olasky than you do. Also, it was Edwards, not Kerry, who debated Dick Cheney. (VP candidates debate each other, wot.)

Again, you're just defining it down to your liking (black churches don't count for some reason, neither does the Catholic left nor very liberal churches like Episcopalians) and then accusing Democrats of being insincere in their religious pitches. I suppose if you only count the angry frothing mob (real or imagined) of Southern Baptists or those weird Mormons with their funny magic underwear, then yes, I guess Republicans do have something approaching a monopoly on bringing religion into politics. But that has precious little to do with reality.

The point i would say is that if you have issue with a certain part of someone's thinking, then you shouldn't hold up their philosophy as an unqualified good and then later, when it suddenly becomes politically expedient, say "i only like this part of her philosophy, the rest of that crap is dangerous."

It would be just as damning if a Christian Marxist did it, went around touting social revolution but later said "oh, but we need to keep religion around," in a blatant effort to increase political appeal later on.