Ryan's new GOP is every bit as pro-regulation, pro-spending, pro-government — and anti-liberty — as the new Berniecrat party of the left.

Via CNN Politics:

House Speaker Paul Ryan described the message delivered to him by an octogenarian businessman a few months ago as akin to getting hit in the head "with a two-by-four, more or less."

He was in Springfield, Missouri, raising money for two House Republican colleagues when, as he recounts it, a "really successful guy" approached him to talk about family.

"Let me give you a piece of advice that I wish I'd listened to," the man told him, according to Ryan. "They used to say it's not the quantity of time you spend with your kids, it's the quality of time. That's a bunch of bull. It's both. And don't ever forget that. "

The idea that a public official would leave his position "to spend more time with family" and have that actually be the reason is an anomaly in Washington, one that draws knowing chuckles that imply a deeper, more dramatic rationale. But in a 30-minute interview with a small group of reporters in his Capitol Hill office, Ryan insisted that family -- to be specific, his three kids in or entering their teenage years -- really was the reason for the looming end of his 20-year congressional career, a decision made Sunday night at a family dinner in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, and announced Wednesday.