"What Ryan is good at is exploiting the willful gullibility of the Beltway media, using a soft-focus style to play into their desire to have a conservative wonk they can say nice things about."The Ryan budget plan's long-term spending projections are 'laughable':
"His plan projects an absurd future, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in which all discretionary spending, now around 12 percent of GDP, shrinks to 3 percent of GDP by 2050. Defense spending alone was 4.7 percent of GDP in 2009. With numbers like that, Ryan is more an anarchist-libertarian than honest conservative."
In the words of one commenter on Krugman's post: Paul Ryan is "a carefully crafted gee-whiz nice guy policy nerd facade concealing a machiavellian ambition and sociopathic policies perfectly aligned with ALEC. He is a consummate con-artist."