It started back at a moment when some people thought Sarah Palin was still thinking about running for president. She wrote an op-ed where she endorsed Ryan’s policies and that put Republican candidates on notice that if you were going to compete for Republican votes in the 2012 primaries, you had to take a stand on Paul Ryan’s budgets.  So that pushed all the candidates into making that choice and Romney, under some pressure frankly, endorsed it.  And I think because there’s been a sort of vacuum in the Romney policy world, Paul Ryan has been very strategic about filling that vacuum.

— Ryan Lizza on how Paul Ryan has captured the GOP

Audio for Terry’s interview with New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza about Michele Bachmann is now up. Enjoy!

For someone whose ideology is really defined by a strong dislike for government, if you look at the way she’s supported herself over the years, it’s mostly through the government. After law school, she works at the IRS, she’s there for four years, then in 1992 she starts taking in foster children and does that from 1992-1998 and is paid by the state to do that. She then works briefly for a local charter school and then she starts running for office and becomes first an employee of the state of Minnesota and then a congresswoman, an employee of the federal government. … Her husband is a psychologist [who] has two counseling clinics that like any other medical professional [clinic] takes lots of money from Medicare and Medicaid — and then on top of that, has received generous farm subsidies for a farm he owns in Wisconsin.

— On today’s Fresh Air, New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza on Michele Bachmann.

For a number of years, Michele Bachmann’s personal website had a list of books she recommended people read. … I was looking over the list and noticed this biography of [Robert E.] Lee by [Steven] Wilkins. [I had] never heard of Wilkins and started looking at who he was. And frankly couldn’t believe that she was recommending this book. … It is an objectively pro-slavery book and one of the most startling things I learned about her in this piece.

— On today’s Fresh Air, New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza talks about the books, writers and beliefs that have shaped Michele Bachmann.

Tomorrow: Ryan Lizza on Michelle Bachmann [His New Yorker profile]

Despite the funny phrasing, at the heart of the idea of leading from behind is the empowerment of other actors to do your bidding or, as in the case of Libya, to be used as cover for a policy that would be suspect in the eyes of other nations if it’s branded as a purely American operation

— Ryan Lizza on the phrase ‘leading from behind’ which has recently become a hot-button topic among political pundits after Lizza wrote in The New Yorker that an Obama advisor had used the term to describe Obama’s actions in Libya. [Lizza on Fresh Air today]

New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza details President Obama’s response to the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East and explains why the president’s actions — in Egypt and then in Libya — say a great deal about the administration’s foreign policy strategy: ”The hinge of the story of his first term will be the uprising in the Middle East that will allow our foreign policy, to allow our interests and our values to align in a region where they have not been aligned for a very long time.”

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A Libyan opposition soldier raises the independence flag over a highrise building in Misurata after Gaddafi forces were defeated in the city center. Photo courtesy of Misurata Freedom Group.

Today: The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza details how recent clashes in the Middle East have remade President Obama’s foreign policy. 

U.S. Department of State: The Week in Review

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About the Author: Sarah Goldfarb serves as Associate Editor to DipNote.

On April 17, Secretary Clinton returned from her visit to Berlin, Seoul, and Tokyo. Assistant Secretary Gordon said the NATO Ministerial in Berlin was “an opportunity to consult with key allies and partners not…

Tomorrow: New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza analyzes Obama’s recent foreign policy decisions. Pictured above: State Department’s Tumblr. [Lizza’s article]