Their self-image, and to a large extent their professional selling point, depends on posing as high-minded types, writes PAUL KRUGMAN

SO, CAN we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon?

And yes, I mean the phenomenon, not the man. Ryan, the chairman of the House of Representatives budget committee and the principal author of the last two congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern GOP extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.

No, what’s interesting is the cult that has grown up around Ryan – and, in particular, the way self-proclaimed centrists elevated him into an icon of fiscal responsibility, and even now can’t seem to let go of their fantasy.

The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Barack Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” – that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”

The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.

Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and $14 million.

Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts – which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent – would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 per cent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year.

Ryan insists that, despite these tax cuts, his proposal is “revenue-neutral”, that he would make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes. But he has refused to specify a single loophole he would close. And if we assess the proposal without his secret (and probably non-existent) plan to raise revenue, it turns out to involve running bigger deficits than we would run under the Obama administration’s proposals.

Meanwhile, 14 million is a minimum estimate of the number of Americans who would lose health insurance under Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicaid; estimates by the Urban Institute actually put the number at between 14 million and 27 million.

So the proposal is exactly as Obama described it: a proposal to deny healthcare (and many other essentials) to millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy – all while failing to reduce the budget deficit, unless you believe in Ryan’s secret revenue sauce.

So why are centrists rising to Ryan’s defence?

Well, ask yourself the following: what does it mean to be a centrist, anyway?

It could mean supporting politicians who actually are relatively non-ideological, who are willing, for example, to seek Democratic support for health reforms originally devised by Republicans, to support deficit-reduction plans that rely on both spending cuts and revenue increases.

And by that standard, centrists should be lavishing praise on the leading politician who best fits that description – a fellow named Barack Obama.

But the “centrists” who weigh in on policy debates are playing a different game. Their self-image, and to a large extent their professional selling point, depends on posing as high-minded types standing between the partisan extremes, bringing together reasonable people from both parties – even if these reasonable people don’t actually exist. And this leaves them unable either to admit how moderate Obama is or to acknowledge the more or less universal extremism of his opponents on the right.

Enter Ryan, an ordinary GOP extremist, but a mild-mannered one. The “centrists” needed to pretend that there are reasonable Republicans, so they nominated him for the role, crediting him with virtues he has never shown any sign of possessing. Indeed, back in 2010 Ryan, who has never once produced a credible deficit-reduction plan, received an award for fiscal responsibility from a committee representing several prominent centrist organisations.

So you can see the problem these commentators face. To admit that the president’s critique is right would be to admit that they were snookered by Ryan, who is the same as he ever was. More than that, it would call into question their whole centrist shtick – for the moral of my story is that Ryan isn’t the only emperor who turns out, on closer examination, to be naked.

Hence the howls of outrage, and the attacks on the president for being “partisan”. For that is what people in Washington say when they want to shout down someone who is telling the truth. – (New York Times service)