They may stand on opposite sides of the political aisle, but Esquire magazine ranks U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) both among the magazine’s "10 Best Members of Congress."
Of Feingold, the magazine wrote, "It is not uncommon for Senator Feingold to find himself the lone vote either for or against something – in the fraught fall of 2001, for instance, he was the sole senator to vote against the so-called USA Patriot Act – and it is also not uncommon to hear of the Democratic leadership in the Senate meeting to figure out what to do about some demand of conscience from ‘goddamn Russ Feingold, who’s so pure and so good and thinks he runs the place,’ as one top aide put it. Well, all we have to say is that by God somebody’s got to be pure and good, and Washington would be a greatly diminished place without Feingold’s annoyingly high standards on matters dealing with the rule of law and constitutional scholarship. Which is what has us worried, because this year he is in the fight of his life."
Of Ryan, Esquire wrote, "We don’t know about you, but we’ve really missed conservatives around here. Not the weirdos at the rallies in the tri-cornered hats and breeches, the other, real, conservatives. Because for about the last nine years – ever since George W. Bush cut taxes while presiding over the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR, with the enthusiastic blessing of the putative conservative party; ever since the ascendancy of the Democrats, who needed little encouragement to continue and even accelerate borrowing and spending our way out of the massive hole we’re in – actual conservatives have been desperately short supply… So it’s come as something of a relief to witness the emergence of Congressman Paul Ryan as a rare credible voice of fiscal responsibility and small-government conservatism on the national scene."
– BizTimes Milwaukee
