Meet Ron Johnson, the Randiest of the Ayn Rand Republicans [View all]
John Nichols on January 29, 2013 - 9:38 AM ET
There is ample evidence to suggest that leading Republican members of the House and Senate are a good deal more familiar with the fiction of Ayn Rand than with the self-evident truths of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Abraham Lincoln.
While the movers and shakers in the partys congressional caucuses may struggle with the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the essential premises of the first Republican president, they can quote chapter and verse from the Russian-born writer who William F. Buckley once decried as a purveyor of ideological fabulism with a scorn for charity.
Rands books serve as an ideological touchstone for a new generation of Republican politicians who have built their politics around the writers cold delineation of distinctions between idealized makers and disdained takers.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, the partys 2012 vice-presidential nominee, peppers his remarks with Randian references and once admitted, The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann employed the Rand lexicon during her 2012 presidential run. California Congressman John Campbell gives interns copies of Rands opus, Atlas Shrugged, while House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-California, tweets: Still reading Atlas Shruggedits quite the read.
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