John Stossel has a very interesting piece about Paul Ryan here, which I think sums up my feelings about the Vice Presidential pick perfectly.  A lot of Libertarians have been warning folks not to get too excited about the Paul Ryan pick.  At the surface, Ryan looks like a Libertarian, or at least as close to one as we are going to get in Washington (with Ron and Rand the exceptions); however, when you dig deeper, you will find he is still a politician.  He talks a lot about free market solutions, but when push came to shove, he voted for TARP and he voted for the bailouts. John Stossel says:

I wish he had voted against those bills, but the political class was in near panic, and Ryan is a politician.

It’s a reason I don’t like politicians.

But at least Ryan speaks against bailouts now.

 

In fact, he voted for the vast majority of Bush’s expansive spending spree.

Is it OK to give a Ryan a pass because he claims he was worried about our economy falling of a cliff, so he voted for bills he did not endorse?  Stossel says, at least he is talking about free market solutions in a relevant way, which is rare in Washington.  And when you get right down to it, I think he is right.  No VP pick by Romney was going to change my mind.  I will still cast my vote proudly for Gary Johnson in November, but I still have to live with the reality that either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is going to be our next president. It is certainly refreshing to have a guy like Paul Ryan in the mix, talking about our debt crisis and free market solutions, but, at the end of the day, he is still a Republican, through and through.