Ryan Lizza’s long New Yorker profile of Paul Ryan is a masterpiece of subtle liberal partisanship. My favorite part is Lizza’s treatment of Ryan’s proposal for premium support Medicare. When referring to the Ryan Roadmap, Lizza describes “Obama’s alleged cuts to Medicare rather than for Ryan’s plan to end the program.” Nowhere in the article do you learn that the most recent version of the Ryan budget spends just as much on Medicare as does President Obama’s proposal, and retains Fee For Service Medicare for those who want to use their premium support to pay for that option. If I thought that Lizza was being at all intellectually honest, I’d find it strange that Lizza would mention the most recent Ryan budget’s changes to Medicaid while not listing its changes to Medicare. Lizza also doesn’t note that premium support payments are to be adjusted for health status. None of this qualifies as lying of course. It is just leaving out relevant facts so that New Yorker readers will have a maximally hostile view of the Ryan budget while walking away from the article feeling well informed.
Lizza made a more clumsy attempt to do the same thing with Michelle Bachmann last year. Joe Carter brought the reality.
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