Randex

Ever since Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” disaster-gaffe in 2012, national Republicans have tried to shirk their image as welfare-hating, green eyeshade–wearing budget choppers. Even Paul Ryan, the former head of the congressional Ayn Rand fan club, now talks about expanding the scope of welfare programs to return more of their dependents into productive workers.

…Ryan the P90X-ripping, budget-slashing devotee of Ayn Rand that Democrats gleefully caricatured as someone who wanted to push grandma off a cliff. Today he’s the geeky white guy dancing badly at a black…

Paul Ryan is a lawmaker that people love to hate. He’s got that Midwestern good-boy affect. He’s into P90x and has a body that power squatters loathe. He reportedly had his interns read books by the cartoonish hater of altruism and “moochers,” Ayn Rand. He is slick and attractive — and to his enemies, he is all the more repellant for that.

But with his latest, tentative attempt at defining an anti-poverty agenda for the right and his party, he has revealed himself to be what earnest commentators have always wanted: A politician who listens to them.