From a New York Times article about Paul Ryan's vote in favor of the tax bill that preserved some of the Bush tax cuts while raising some rates, particularly for upper-income earners:
Mr. Ryan's vote, which lent support to Mr. Boehner, also places him squarely in a role he has long found comfortable: that of the dutiful Republican soldier. Mr. Ryan voted in favor of many large and contentious issues — the Medicare prescription drug plan, the bank and auto bailouts — and in the process cast aside conservative orthodoxy to support his party's leadership.
Now that the 2012 presidential election is over, the Times finally discovers that Paul Ryan makes a habit of casting aside conservative orthodoxy. Funny, I don't recall reading much about that in the Times during the campaign. When Mitt Romney picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate, the main Times news article described Mr. Ryan as "one of the party's young conservative leaders" and "he chief architect of the Republican Party's plan for tax and spending cuts and an advocate of reshaping the Medicare program of health insurance for retirees." A companion article said Mr. Ryan's budgets "have defined nothing short of a conservative reordering of the nation's tax and spending priorities for the 21st century." It's almost as if now that Mr. Ryan has lost the election, the Times finally feels as if it is safe to share with readers the idea that he's not as conservative as they made him sound during the campaign.
The other odd thing about the Times's formulation is that in categorizing the reasons for Mr. Ryan's departures from conservative orthodoxy — "dutiful Republican soldier," "support his party's leadership" — the article doesn't seem to consider the possibility that Mr. Ryan might actually have been backing in each case what he thought was the best policy for the country.