Supposedly Ayn Rand is all about laissez-faire capitalism and the "selfish" individual acting in his or her own rational self interest as being the only honest moral path. So. What would an Objectivist find in the Republican platform?
Well, as a philosophy for rationalizing the excesses and exploitations of the rich, Objectivism works nicely for the GOP. Entrepreneurs are heroes. Unions are evil. And the poor are parasites.
Rand would likely agree with the idea of keeping taxes as low as possible. She probably would support a flat tax. But she would be disgusted by government-subsidized industries, bailouts, tax incentives and the like -- and she wouldn't give Republicans a pass on these issues. She would consider defense industry contractors that depend on government contracts just as useless and unacceptable as farm subsidies, green energy subsidies or any other kind of handout.
As unflinching as she may be in dismissing the poor as lazy, she also was very much against violence. The word she uses for governments and businesses that play the violence card, I believe, is "looters." So this idea among budget hawks like Paul Ryan that defense spending cannot be cut would draw no applause from Rand.
Now let's look at another vital plank in the GOP platform -- abortion. The GOP is against abortion, and Ryan (a Catholic) is really against abortion, even in cases of incest and rape. However, unlike Ryan and libertarian darling Ron Paul, Ayn Rand was a complete,total supporter of a woman's right to choose abortion. Here's a quote from her:
"An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
Oh yeah. Ayn Rand also was a fairly strident athiest.
But before the Dems get too excited about calling out Paul Ryan's obvious hypocricies, Ayn Rand was no fan of Democrats and liberal/progressive ideas. She hated everything about "socialism."
She would have expected any woman who seeks an abortion to pay for it herself. No Medicaid funding. No public money for Planned Parenthood.
She also was a fairly ugly critic of the feminist movement of the 1960s and of homosexuality. In her mind, everybody deserves same legal rights in terms of dealing with the government. But she did not extend that idea to the private sector. She strongly opposed the idea of "special rights" for gay people and defended the rights of private property owners and private employers to discriminate against gays, and pretty much anybody else, if they so choose. Her thinking: the government has near-zero right to dictate what people do with their own property or how to run their businesses.
So it comes as no surprise that Ayn Rand would dislike Obama far, far more than Romney.
The big difference? The Dems don't pretend to agree with Ayn Rand.