Love Is Always Scarpering, Or Cowering, Or Fawning

This month’s Cillizza Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field Of Hackdom goes to…Chris Cillizza:

You should watch this Paul Ryan town hall on CNN. The guy is extremely impressive.

— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) January 13, 2017

Um…

It is very difficult to have a working understanding of health policy and simultaneously be impressed by his answers on ACA. https://t.co/NTdpL9gTIw

— Adrianna McIntyre (@onceuponA) January 13, 2017

You can watch Ryan’s comments about health care yourself, but they’re evasive gibberish when they’re not outright dishonest. The idea that state high-risk pools — especially at the levels the GOP would plausibly fund them — could effectively cover people with pre-existing conditions is a joke. (More here.) The claim that insurance markets are in a “death spiral” is a flat-out lie. His assertions that the proposed Republican reforms would provide better and cheaper policy options was supported by no detail whatsoever. Ryan, as always, is the anthithesis of impressive, and yet his media reputation as a Real Wonky Man of Seriousity never fades.

To be Scrupulously Fair, Ryan’s primary goal to offer worse or no health insurance to more than 20 million people to pay for upper-class tax cuts does has not, to the best of my knowledge, deviated from best practices in email management.