Jonathan Schell, The Nation
Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate is the latest episode in a story of conflict within the Republican Party that has many chapters. It has been said a thousand times that, in the long competition between the party’s radical base and its slightly less radical leadership (there are no moderates anywhere in sight in the GOP these days), the choice of the extreme budget-cutter Ryan represents a shift toward the extreme base, and that is certainly true. But it is also a development in another, related story.The record of the last decade or so suggests that...