This is truly, as they used to say, "a laff riot." Paul Ryan was interviewed on CBS This Morning, and Charlie Rose treated him with kid gloves. (Made me wish for Chris Cuomo.)
"Can I ask you?" Rose said. "George W. Bush spoke yesterday and he said bigotry seemed to be emboldened?"
"Yeah. I didn't hear his speech but I think identity politics has gotten out of control," the right wing darling said.
"It's being played on the left and right and it's really dangerous for our country. It seeks to exploit fear, ignorance and seeks to exploit differences among people and prey on those people. That's how you disunify a culture and a country. There are some who believe it's immoral -- and it is -- and some believe it's the way to win an election." (Like the party you work for, Paul?)
"You're not talking about white supremacists," Rose said.
"That's even worse than identity politics. That's a severe, awful, dark form of identity politics but the point I'm trying to say, look, I'm conservative, there are liberals," Ryan said.
"That's one thing. We all want to help our country and help people and unify. We have different ideas and principles how to achieve that goal, but when you're playing identity politics, you're trying to divide the country and citizens against one another for some political gain. That's a political tactic that unfortunately has been tried over and over, much more lately and that's wrong."
"George W. Bush spoke to something more broadly about that, he seemed to be talking about the president," Rose said.
"I have no clue," Ryan said.
"Here's the New York Times," Rose said.
"I don't typically read the New York Times," he said that.
Now, of course he's lying. But if the fact that he has to pretend he doesn't read the "liberal" New York Times isn't identity politics, I don't know what is!
