Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, has a piece up at Economic Policies for the 21st Century praising New York Times columnist David Brooks as "a columnist of intellectual rigor and much-deserved respect." Mr. Ryan goes on to say that Mr. Brooks's column from the other day, which insisted, "Over the next decade there will have to be spending cuts and tax increases," in Mr. Ryan's view, "elevates the tone and the substance of the debate to a serious level."
Reason magazine's Matt Welch, rebutting the same Brooks column, was less obsequious.
Mr. Ryan's praise for Mr. Brooks comes in the context of an article pushing back at Mr. Brooks's criticism of him, but it may strike a lot of free-market types as fulsome.
