With a National Taxpayers Union average of 9%, Connolly is the second most left-wing member of either house, actually slightly worse than Obama's 9.33% Senate average.

Connolly looks after Connolly. Period.

I am disappointed that Gerry Connolly joined the "bash everything Republican" club. Roughly half of his district votes Republican, and many favor restraint in Government taxing, spending, and control, including those who work for the Government or their contractors. To bring dollars and favorable legislation back to Fairfax County and the rest of the 11th District, Connolly will need the respect of the majority in Congress, and he has squandered that opportunity. That's just one reason why Chris Perkins is a better choice for us for Congress. Chris Perkins has experience working on Capitol Hill, where he was able to observe how work actually gets done, something Connolly did not have before before he was elected. Connolly may regret choosing to speak out 100% for the Obama/Pelosi agenda for California-style government, but realizes that it is now too late to change face without alienating his base. Connolly has no plan for saving Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security from bankruptcy. We need new hope from someone who understands and can articulate the issues and potential solutions. That's what makes people like Paul Ryan and Chris Perkins our best hope for restoring America's greatness and restoring every individual's opportunity for success.

Connolly needs to go in November. he is responsible for many of our ills including Obamacare SAFU and the damage that it will impose on all of us.

Apparently he is. And should be. :)

What adult discourse. Perhaps instead of calling names (flake, political hack) you guys could come up with some reasoned analysis as to how specifically Ryan's somewhat vague proposals are going to help end the deficit without cutting taxes for millionaires, gutting infrastructure, and throwing the economy into a real depression. Getting rid of home mortgage interest - even for second homes - will really help those of us who might want to sell our homes; eliminating deductions will really help us small businesspeople. Right? I live in Frank Wolf's District and will vote for him but Connolly has a point in that although a nice guy Ryan is pretty darn radical in that he will indeed gut our already totering infrastructure. Of course this is a blog of sorts and I should regard it as more entertainment than civil and reasoned debate...Silly me, I expect to read George Will and National Review quality reasoning from conservatives....obviously not here.

Ryan's "radicalism" amounted to him proposing to reduce the projected baseline budget increase of $155 billion to an increase of $55 billion, and then accept an increase of $120 billion.

Actually 12% was Connolly's 2011 rating. He scored 6% in 2010, giving him an average of 9%, marginally lower even than Obama's 9.33% Senate average.

John, I agree, but as a former FSO you should know that referring to "Mitt the Twit, another rightwing plutocrat" is only going to incite name calling from the right wingers. The fact that Romney and Ryan come from inherited wealth in contrast to Obama's beginnings is more important than calling them plutocrats. Read between the lines of this Fox News item: "Ryan worked as a marketing consultant [salesman?]for his family's construction business before being elected to Congress. The company -- Ryan Incorporated Central -- began as an earthmoving business created by his great-grandfather in 1884....Ryan was the legislative director for Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, 1995-1997 before being elected to his first of seven terms in Congress in 1998. The guy is a very articulate career politician, who although having held summer and part-time jobs never had to endure the concerns of Middle America about working to pay a mortgage or pay medical bills. These guys who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths and will be the first to proclaim themselves as examples of entrepreneurship and are the type that will belittle you for being an overpaid civil servant sap who could have been rich if you weren't lazy and wanted to work in government. They've never had to ride a train and make getting rid of Amtrak or investment in higher speed rail like the rest of the civilized world one of their first priorities.

It's hard for me to imagine that Reston could be so full of one-percenters that there'd be much support at all for a couple of medieval, plutocratic frat boys. Romney and Ryan are ridiculous!

Mark, thats just like saying I dont want a surgeon excising my cancer unless he has had the cancer himself. How idiotic is that elitist attitude... go figure.

Stella, Reston is full of Lexus leftists.

Good point, Don. The DC suburbs are the most affluent counties on the country because of the presence of so many highly-compensated federal bureaucrats--virtually all of whom vote Democrat.

Back in the 1980s when I was at the University of Colorado (Denver) we had a couple of Cadillac Marxists in the economics department. It was funny to hear them spew Marxist class rhetoric as they drove cars too expensive for me to afford. These days though the Cadillac is passé and the local leftist can afford much better, so your term "Lexus leftists" is even more apt.

Another item that marks Carollla's prejudices as leftist is his obsession with whether someone ever said something good about Ayn Rand. Rand has long been the libertarian leftist love to hate--ironically, since Rand herself denigrated libertarians as anarchists with their heads in the sand while supporting the Cold War against communism (which they opposed). Rand tended to get nasty about her opponents, like the leftists and unlike the old country club mushy moderate Republicans, which is part of why they developed such a hatred for her--that and the fact that she pointed out that Big Government allowed, rather than rule by Plato's enlightened philosopher king (scratch a leftist and you'll find a wanna-be enlightened philosopher king), rule by the mediocre. They hated her puncturing their inflated self-image, and apparently, even decades after her death, still can't forgive her for it. :-D

David, your observations are laser-sharp. The Left hates Rand with even more passion than she hated them!

Thanks, Don! Being a conservative in academia I've heard more than my share of leftist Rand-bashing. It's funny too because my of my best friends going all the way back to high school went on a Rand/Objectivist kick and I used to tease him (gently) about it. He has a good sense of humor, fortunately, so he would joke about getting together with his Objectivist group and handing out pamphlets at the airport to Hare Krishnas. :-D

Well, he did say he was "amiable" which couldn't be said for the general perception of Virginia's own sneering Rep.Cantor...and if you were of Connolly's and my age and grew up with or in the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Jacob Javits, Richard Lugar, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Edmund Brooke etc. Ryan is definitely a radical - and ideologue.

Just check out any liberal rating service and you'll find the same nuances. Ryan is a mushy moderate, and Connonlly is a hardcore leftist. Since you're using the tired old "1%" propaganda of the far left, I'd think you'd be happy to find that Connolly is a radial leftist like you instead of whining about the rating, although it is true that Americans prefer mushy moderates like Ryan to leftists like Connonally, Obama and Romney.

Least experienced, Gerry? Paul Ryan has been a congressman since 1999. He was elected at the age of 27. Paul Ryan has been mentored by many in the House, as well as by prominent businessmen, since the age of 19. His vision for America is clear, while yours, Gerry is a passing nebula.

Amen John!

Abigail, it's funny too that anyone who supports Obama would even utter the word "inexperienced"--not with a straight face, anyway. :-)

Ryan's "radicalism" amounted to him proposing to reduce the projected baseline budget increase of $155 billion to an increase of $55 billion, and then accept an increase of $120 billion.

Looks like you wasted a lot of time studying history and politics....should have focused on economics, or maybe running a business. The pseudo-intellectual liberal spin must be entertaining in the coffee house but it falls flat in the real world.

I not only studied history, but taught it for a decade at the University of Iowa. Ryan is a mushy moderate who occasionally talks a good libertarian game but doesn't walk the walk. His desire to slow the growth rate of government so that the economy can catch up and shrink the relative share government takes is hardly "radical." It would be nice if he actually did seriously question the socialist role that socialists of both parties have imposed in roughly the last half century, but only an ignoramus who hasn't studied anything but his leftist high school textbook would think that a mushy moderate like Ryan was any sort of "radical," other than perhaps radically mushy. :-D

What other current path? Ryan's transportation budget plan or lack thereof? Capitalism in America depends on government infrastructure, support and activism...Obama has displayed the same vision as Lincoln with the Transcontinental Railroad and Teddy Roosevelt with the Panama Canal and FDR with rural electrification and the TVA. All of those were economic engines and job creators but Mitt the Twit and Ryan view at such investment as big government interference. And spare me the ludicrous notion that President Obama is a socialist rather than a capitalist....having lived and studied in and studied socialist regimes for much of my adult life (some of it serving along the Iron Curtain and elsewhere in the field) I'm sick and tired of people who obviously slept through or flunked junior high and high school history and who haven't read Marx or Lenin (not even the Cliff Notes version) who have no understanding of or actually have observed what socialism is and isn't and what capitalism is braying about how the current administration is anti-capitalist. And oh, by the way both my wife and I are small business people and capitalists savy enough to know that Ryan's vision isn't friendly to small businesses..

I used to teach history at the University of Iowa, including a course on the history of socialism. I find it amusing when some liberal comes along and gives the Marxist definition of socialism, "government ownership of the means of production as though it were actually the definition of socialism. Socialism predates Marx, and refers not to just one strand (communism, or international socialism) but a whole complex of ideologies that subordinate the individual to the government, including fascism (national socialism), an liberal socialism (which keeps the forms of classical liberal governance--voting--while eliminating the substance of classical liberalism's individual rights to life, liberty and property. What's true is that Obama is no sort of doctrinaire anything, but he is a socialist. Indeed most of today's Republicans are pretty socialistic too. It's funny to hear socialist know-nothings like Mark Carolla bray about capitalism about which they know nothing at all and give us the Marxist cliff notes version. He's right about one thing though: Obama shows the sort of vision that FDR gave us of a permanently depressed economy. Only when we've replaced him and stopped his tax-spend-and-regulate binge will the economy recover. Even Bill Clinton would be a welcome relief from a radical leftist like Obama with is 9% National Taxpayers Union average.

Well-said, David!

Let's hope it is a bit more civil than some of the comments on Patch...I predict that Representative Paul Ryan will run circles around Vice President Joe Biden. Both have excellent educational credentials but by all accounts Ryan is articulate and likeable. His libertarian and allegedly Ayn Rand philosophy and ideology will probably not be evident - it is very hard to find them unless you read the vagaries and fine print of his budget proposals. Governor Romney, clearly pleased with his pick, & has already mentioned that HE has a budget plan too. Ryan is a Sarah Pallin with intelligence and education and will generally energize the Republican ticket. The debate will be great theater. I suspect Ryan will clobber Biden and Obama will clobber Romney.

Don - My perceived radicalism in his plan - and I've read it - isn't in his view on entitlements - I can agree with much of it. What people such as myself are concerned with are his Ayn Rand liberatarian view of government and his role as a mentor and ideological leader for the Tea Party - you might disagree but to traditional old school Republicans and conserrvatives those are "radical" philosophies, and we could argue that point until the cows come home and never agree.

Mark, Ryan admires and has been deeply influenced in his life by Ayn Rand, as I have as well, but he is NOT an Objectivist--he is a Catholic. There can be much overlap in the principles and application of both, but in metaphysical terms of course they are mutually exclusive. You say that Tea Party solutions to our crisis are not acceptable to "traditional old school Republicans and conserrvatives(sic)." I'd definitely disagree with that!

Thanks, Don. An interesting thing about Carolla is that he says he's willing to vote for Wolf, who has a 59% average of National Taxpayers Union ratings, but he'll vote for Obama and Biden (arguably the stupidest elected Democrat in the country) over Ryan. Obama has a 9% NTU Senate rating. (Biden has a 17% Senate rating.) Ryan has a 74% rating. So Ryan is only 15 points less liberal than Wolf, but Obama is 50 points more liberal than Wolf--half the scale. You have to wonder how someone can be so radically off base as to think that Ryan, 15 points away from Wolf, is the racial one, and Obama, 50 points away, isn't. Now Carolla has been pretty dishonest here with his multiple hypocrisies, but I'm inclined to believe here that rather than being dishonest about the "old-style Republicans" he's actually just slavishly devoted to liberal media propaganda--ignore and irrational rather than dishonest. What do you think?

David, I think he's all over the place and confused, and as you said, slavishly devoted to lefty media propaganda. Like most of these beltway types slopping and slurping at the federal trough, he's the type that would rather go along to get along than fight for real reforms. He'll side with the status quo just about every time. Oh, and there's a spot in your last comment where you typed "racial" when I believe you really intended to type "radical."

Hi Don! Good catch on the "racial" instead of "radical." We all belong to one race or another, so I guess everything is racial in a way. :-D

Seriously though, I think you're right about Mark. I'd like to believe that beneath that posturing first one way and then another, under the hypocrisy and media-parroting, that there's a decent guy.

Agree!

David, if you and I were debating in an academic setting, I'd find it hard to imagine that you would be as derisive as you are online. Are you so removed from civil discourse and enamored with your ideology that you expect anybody who criticizes your views or disagrees with you to apologize? The Patch is an opinion forum & one can suggest that any political group may be ignorant of one's interpretation of history. If you don't understand the concept of different interpretations of history I'd suggest you are the one who is the posseur. Feel free to violently disagree with anything anybody posts, but please don't stoop to insults & name calling. Throughout this thread you've been the one who "pompously and arrogantly" has declared your knowledge of history before insulting me by name & calling me an "ignoramous" early on. I resent you calling me a "lying leftist" (anybody who disagrees with your interpretation of history is a "liar" or a "leftist"? ) & over my career I've never had to "pose" as "hard-working" and certainly don't have to prove it to you. You do not have the right to accuse - personally - anybody who disagrees with your interpretation of history, socialism, conservatism or political theory as being a liar, pompous, condescending, or ignorant, nor do you have the right to be derisive of their education. Some and I have a view of America that is a bit different from your libertarian view and owe you no apology for it. So enough of the name-calling.

You seem a bit slow today, Mark. I just did to you what you were doing to conservatives here. As for expecting an apology, I didn't. I suspected you'd attack me again like you did, but I wanted to give you a chance to repudiate your bad behavior and be a mensch.

I've been wondering what their record for comments on an article is...as of now, there are 424 comments on this recent article:

http://annandale.patch.com/articles/speak-out-what-do-you-think-of-romney-s-vp-choice

Don, do you know if 242 is their record? We only have 60-some on this article. :-D

It's now up to 438 on that article. I don't know what the record is, that's why I said what I said earlier.

If I were an advertiser, I'd stay far from the blowhard commenters on this page. You don't do any of your institiutions of higher learning or "think tanks" any favors.

Neither do you do a very good job of supporting your candidates in this election. On the one hand, you point out how this region is dependent on government spending for its wealth. On the other hand, you criticize Connelly for supporting government spending and revere Ryan and Romney who wish to slash it. It follows that the loss of Connelly or the election of Ryan/Romney could be devestating to our regional economy.

Mark:
Please define "Tea Party" and please define "Peronists" (actual term; "Peronistas") and give three precepts of each and three proponents/members of each. Please cite your sources.

Oh David, Get over yourself. I'm hardly outraged - the only thing you are is a blogging bully. I haven't attacked a single person personally, and I'm not going to waste my time nor the time of the readers of the Patch trying to kotow to whatever views you hold dear and true. I will apologize to the readers for wasting their time by dignifying your personal attacks with replies..and getting down to your level and appearing like a blow hard. Just because a political moderate disagrees with your views of socialism or conservatism or opines that Paul Ryan is radical and you don't agree doesn't mean they are a hypocrite. I know enough of my history to know that extreme right wing ideologues call those that disagree with them socialists, or "leftists," and extreme leftists label moderates as "fascists" so I'm not rising to the bait. No, I'm not sorry, and if you can't take general, non-personal criticism of any group's political beliefs and perceive it as an "insult" you don't understand American politics.

No, otherwise you would have flunked the name spelling part.

The baseline budget called for an increase of $155 billion. Ryan originally promised a "cut" of $100 billion, meaning an increase of only $55 billion. By the time Ryan was done compromising with Democrats, his "cut" of $100 billion turned into only $12 to $35 billion (depending on who was doing the scoring), meaning an increase of $120 billion to $140 billion. There's nothing radical about that sort of mushy moderate smaller increase budget.

Forgot the part about walks on water, heals the sick, saves the lame.

Evidently he's still working on curing the blind, as evidenced by the previous comment.

Most of that is nothing to be proud of, rather it is why Obama is running away from his record. Obamacare is a 2,700 monstrosity of bureaucratic strangulation, new taxes, and unwanted government interference and micromanaging of what must properly be personal, private decisions. It was shoved down our throats only because Al Franken(the single needed senate vote) cheated his way into office in an election that saw 1,099 convicted felons vote in a race decided by 312 ballots. In the ensuing investigation, 177 individuals have been convicted of election fraud crimes, and 66 more are awaiting trial. All in one election!

Obama did not "capture" Bin Laden--Obama and Valerie Jarrett tried to repeatedly thwart the mission that killed Bin Laden, until Leon Panetta had had enough and ordered the green light. Obama was called in off the golf course after the fact, was told by his betters to sit down and shut up and be glad he could publicly, falsely take credit for it. Cont.'

Forcing our military to celebrate sodomy as if it is on par with procreation is nothing to be proud of. The DoD is increasingly a disaster of political-correctness.

Obama didn't get us out of Iraq, Bush's timetable did.

The Nobel prize awarded to Obama has made a laughingstock out of the Nobel prize committee.

Obama didn't "save" the auto industry, it is still barely on life support and Obama looted investors' money to buy 500,000 shares of stock at $100/share which is now worth $20/share. The whole operation is one big union graft scheme, with non-union people being thrown out on their ears. Shameful! Nationalizing industries is what socialist dictators do. Romney was right, a managed bankruptcy according to the law is what was called for. Cont.'

Dodd-Frank, the trillion-dollar stimulus abomination union slush-fund, and the rest of the thousands of pages of communism rammed through on us are the cause of our current malaise, not the accomplishments of which you want to boast on Obama's behalf. Historically, the deeper and more severe the recession, the steeper and more robust the bounceback. Not in this case! Obama, like FDR, has made things worse and prolonged the suffering because he is doing more and more and more of what caused the collapse: Throwing good money after bad in absurd, doomed social welfare schemes that aggravate moral hazard and incentivize failure.

Employment remains stagnant and millions are jumping onto the disability rolls, encouraged by democrats who want more and more voters dependent on them.

Obama has gutted the missile defense capability of our allies and laid open the throat of the West to the dubious intentions of his true partners, the anti-Western powers around the globe.

Obama's endless carbon communist hoaxes are driving up the price of energy (intentionally) and the price of cars; cafe standards planned will add $15,000 to the price of a car!

Obama's goal--cutting America down to size--is proceeding smoothly. Marxists can be happy and proud that their Dear Leader is well on his way to a socialist utopia. But this is America, after all, and president Romney along with vice president Ryan are coming to the rescue.

Under Obama, 90% of home mortgages and 97% of student loans are controlled by the federal government! This is the freedom that our forbears fought so hard and so long for...??

Priceless! :)

Bill - Looks like you took the same class I did at the War College on spining answers. I think I remember the phrase "technically true" from an ethics book in the same program entitled "Lying." :) Willl buy you coffee soon. I presume you don't want one of those liberal faux italiano cafe ridiculoso.

You are correct Java Master much of the commentary on the Patch consists of the political extremes bashing each other back and forth, and in my surprise at being labled as various types of left wingers because of my opinions I admit that I inflicted a long conversation on the readers of the Patch...again my apologies. It took me a while to realize that some commentaries shouldn't be dignified with a response. The nature of online blogging and commentaries is that the floodgates have been opened to the rude, the intolerant, the self-important, the ignorant and stupid, whether they call themselves Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, or whatever and it is futile to argue if somebody attacks your comments. Bill Campenni, however, is worth reading and listening to as he definitely is not an extremist; he's a civil debater and a true American Hero fighter pilot and doesn't stoop to call those who disagree with him names. Bill understands that he gets more respect and are more persuasive by presenting a counter position rather than by shouting at or labling those that disagree with him. I enjoy talking with him...and if you carefully read his points such as "technically true, but totally divorced from reality" he is a master of the "you might have a point but I disagree with you "...school of civility and debate which is largely absent in the Patch political opinion.

Thanks Mark. Just the way I wrote it. I'll send you the payment tomorrow.

You think Obama cares about the military?

As a reward for their long and many combat tours, he will soon throw 150,000 of them out into the street to compete for non-existent jobs with 23 million unemployed and 11 million illegal aliens.

And to make sure they don't get too uppity, his henchmen will make sure that their votes are impeded or blocked across the country by complicit democrat Secretaries of State and county voting registrars who will delay sending out military ballots.

In the Obama/Holder regime, it is easier to vote if you are dead, an illegal alien, or a college student voting twice at home AND school. If you are in the Afghan mountains, you are out of luck.

But if by chance you end up dead, you will get a machine-generated letter of condolence from Obama, ( http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/02/families-deceased-seals-claim-presidential-condolence-letters-signed-with-auto/ ).

Campenni FTW as always!