Can Paul Ryan Lie His Way Out Again?

Last year’s VP loser, like all habitual liars, must have a short memory span and expect others to as well. Otherwise how could Paul Ryan vote to send the nation crashing into default and expect to be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate in 2016?

Even sooner, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, can he go to work with a straight face on the Congressional conference to resolve differences on the upcoming budget?

Ryan’s mendacity is hard to forget, even for a politician. After years of proclaiming her as his idol, he dropped Ayn Rand in a heartbeat when questioned about her as “an outspoken atheist.”

His GOP convention speech set truth meters clanging over lies, distortions and omissions, mounting into double figures. Ryan’s indifference to truth seems more reflexive than expedient. Asked about marathons, he casually noted, “I had a two-fifty something.” When Runner’s World checked, the number was 4.0.

Now he is the Tea Party policy wonk, whose figures are expected to be sound even if his arguments are loopy. Can someone who voted to decimate the economy be a deal-maker?

Only in the same alternate reality that led Mitt Romney to pair up with Ryan, whose entire working life has been not only as one of Rand’s “moochers and looters” but in the 47 percent of Americans “dependent upon government” cited in Romney’s suicidal gaffe. Since college two decades ago, Ryan has been on government payrolls every day of his career, first as a legislative aide and then as a member of the House, never in the GOP hallowed private sector except for an off-campus stint at a fast-food joint.

Now Ryan says, “I look forward to convening the first conference on a budget resolution since 2009. And though a budget resolution by itself can’t resolve our spending problem, I’m committed to making a bipartisan budget conference a success.”

Is that a lie? Are his lips moving?