In principle the country faces a choice this fall between a moderate conservative, President Obama, and the extreme conservative Romney-Ryan ticket that wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare and eliminate most of the services that the public expects from the federal government. The reason why this choice only exists in principle is that the media have worked hard to conceal Representative Ryan's extreme positions from the public. Now that Governor Romney has implicitly embraced these positions by selecting Representative Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee, it remains to be seen whether the media will do its job.

First, in spite of all the name-calling about President Obama being a Kenyan socialist, he has pushed an agenda that most Republicans would have been comfortable with 20 years ago. His health care plan was put first forward by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1992, before Governor Romney put it in place in Massachusetts.