<–I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.

Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and now Mitt Romney’s running mate has been on my political radar for 10 years now; if I had a gun to my head and had to state which national GOPer I feared the most as a Democrat, Paul Ryan would be the one.

It’s not his youth or good looks, though neither hurt him; it’s his brain and what he does with it that should concern all Dems from our Progressive Extremist far lefties to the more moderate, middle-of-the-roaders like me.

He is toasted as a conservative intellectual and though he is very smart and educated, I think that we toss around the term ‘intellectual’ too easily not understanding exactly what that means.  Paul Ryan’s great gift is his ability to articulate his views to people and then understand how they process words, ideas, and ideals in the political marketplace and generally, people in Wisconsin’s 1^st Cong District like him for having that ability even if  they’re not in full agreement with his views.

I’ve told a lot of our current candidates in Nevada to shut up and listen to their own voters because one never learns anything politically with their mouths open and Paul Ryan is a student of that same philosophy.

He’s been returned to Congress 7 times now in a district that should lean Dem and every two years he wins by greater and greater pluralities having won his District when Obama took it in 2008 with Ryan picking off 20% of Dem voters in a hyper-Dem political year.

<–This is Wisconsin’s most popular public official, Secretary of  Beer Ms Heidi Lee Tittytappers!

His district includes Kenosha famous for making the old American Motors Corporation’s Pacer & Gremlin cars and Racine, headquarters for the Johnson Wax Company, one of the most socially progressive companies in America whose products are in every American home.

There’s a Nestle’s chocolate factory in Burlington that I’ve been to and you can smell chocolate from 10 miles away if the wind is in your favor; those Toll-House cookies we love so much are so good because they buy their milk for making their chocolate chips from right down the road, right from the cows!

It’s’ a beautiful little corner of America—all rolling hills, moraines, farms, and towns—that contains almost everything that we do in America within it and that’s what makes Paul Ryan representing it noteworthy.

Wisconsinites are cheeseheads and Packer fans which is a native Illinoisan’s birthright to accuse them of being, but it is also one of those regions where you take the pulse of America because though the state’s European, German, and Scandinavian dominate ethnic groups lean progressive, they also can’t be sold a pile of hooey as current national Democratic Party uber-extremists try to peddle there—they’re just too practical and pragmatic politically to buy into the Dem hype even if they’re registered Dems.

<–They resoundingly turned back the recall effort against GOP Governor Scott Walker; they knew he was doing what was necessary and thought he was doing a better than average job too.

Scott Walker will also win a second term!

Ryan’s personal narrative is interesting and he is showing signs of Reagan’s Teflon qualities but we’ll see if he can weather what is about to befall he and his family from the Dems’ Saul Alinsky hate-machine that is already in full-throttle.

But Paul Ryan knows how to speak to and with this Midwestern sensibility in his southeastern Wisconsin district and people of all political views know to listen to this man even if they don’t agree with him; that’s why he drives the far-left Progressive Extremists to distraction!

He also knows how to do retail politics and talks to everyone about everything; that too engenders respect if not affections for him from voters of both parties.

He will be crucified by the Obama campaign more so because of those qualities than Mitt Romney will be because of his Mormonism and wishy-washiness.  This stated, no one in American history has ever cast a presidential vote for someone because of whom his VP choice was, rather, it is the public display of the nominee’s first ‘executive’ decision.

McCain’s pick was a simultaneous train wreck, flood, earthquake, and nuclear war with Sarah Palin.

Jimmy Carter inspired no one—his pick included—with Walter Mondale.

…and George HW Bush; well we all remember Dan Quayle!!!

2004 Dem nominee Senator John Kerry never ignited with voters much like Mitt Romney is doing today!

<–Kerry may have looked like Lurch but everyone loved Lurch; Kerry only dreamed that we‘d love him as much as we did our ‘lil Lurch–but alas, no one ever ‘loved’ John Kerry which is the same way we feel about Mitt Romney today!!!

But in 2004, I was one of those Dem die-hards who were all but praying and lighting candles for John Kerry to choose John Edwards.  Good Lord, I was so balls-to-the-wall for Edwards—yes your dear ol’ Dawg gets ‘em wrong sometimes too—that I failed to see the fatal error in his choosing Edwards—not because of his atrocious behaviors done to his then cancer-stricken wife—but because Edwards had far more star power and appeal to partisan Dems than John Kerry had in his little finger!

For weeks, I heard nothing but ‘I wish our ticket was reversed Mike’ and I knew we lost even before Kerry allowed himself to be photographed windsurfing ala Dukasis riding around in a tank and helmet.

Everything old is new again!

‘Old’ is the ‘new’ New!

That would be Mitt Romney windsurfing and wearing a helmet that you’ll be seeing in the coming weeks!  It’s remarkable how similar–if not identical–2012′s Romney is to 2004′s Kerry!

Ideology and compatibility issues aside, your backup guy chosen for his ability to go to State funerals, hold raincoats over his forearm, and carry those ‘warm buckets of spit’ around, should never be better than the candidate himself!

And Paul Ryan is 100 times better than Mitt Romney and will dominate and overshadow the GOP’s standard-bearer not only because a lefty media will be relentless, but because Paul Ryan can ‘articulate’ his points of view, something Mitt Romney hasn’t done at all this cycle.

And just as John Kerry was consumed—if not devoured— by the charismatic and then popular John Edwards 8 years ago, Mitt Romney voluntarily placed himself as the second banana choosing someone who the GOP adores hoping that some of his magic rubs off on him in the voting booth which has never really occurred in American political history before.

Conventional wisdom is by definition, always conventional, and you make your first ‘executive’ decision by first ‘doing no harm’ to yourself, but you’d also hope to bring on a state or constituency that may be wobbly for you—that has worked before—JFK & LBJ being the most infamous with Johnson bringing about 45K likely stolen votes in Texas to their win there— and it would have better benefitted Romney choosing Sen Marco Rubio to bring along Florida and its 29 Electoral Votes rather than one of the few current GOPers who can actually speak calmly in coherent sentences and state a point of view without shouting buzzwords and political bile at us in Paul Ryan–who will overshadow the GOP’s standard-bearer in 2012 in Mitt Romney.

On the second tier of analysis, I’d have never guessed either party would have a Mormon and a Catholic team in my lifetime, or that the current GOP wouldn’t see any value in at least some level of ethnic window dressing in a Rubio, Sandoval, Haley, or Jindal—the new 2012 GOP ticket being blinding white—neon white really—with Paul Ryan getting sunburned during full moons having no melanin in his genetic code at all!

<–Ryan’s biggest negative for me is his lock-step adherence to Ayn Rand-oholism and regular Dawg readers know I thought she was nuts and that anyone who bases a political philosophy or ideology on her and her batshit crazy Hollywood script-girl rantings and snortings has to have a screw loose themselves!!

http://www.watchdogwag.com/?p=6022

Paul Ryan back-peddled so fast when nailed on it about Ayn Rand that he provided a solid week’s worth of Green Energy trying desperately to downplay his lifetime admiration of she and her kooky self-indulgent ‘works’—which is hardly ‘intellectual’ of Paul Ryan first in not owning his admiration of her, and second, trying to distance himself as her devotee with his own national political ambitions at grave risk for loving her so damn much.

Democrats will eviscerate him just on Ayn Rand alone; again, all of the attention to him rather than to Mitt Romney and that is how the fall campaign will play out and though he doesn’t deserve it based on his poor performance and enormous expansion of government, Mitt Romney likely re-elected Barack Obama with about 300 Electoral Votes by choosing Paul Ryan.

Romney didn’t need to shore up the GOP and its Tea Party Wing—they weren’t going anywhere—he needed to reassure the Indies and the very fluid non-committed/non-aligned voters in the suburbs and exurbs and Rep Paul Ryan can’t deliver that to him being the star of the ticket.

As this becomes plainer and easier for non-political voters to see and to understand, the correlating result should be a House and Senate that could provide veto-proof majorities to the GOP; such is the folly of Mitt Romney trying to prove how conservative he is to himself–and to everyone else–by choosing Paul Ryan.

If President Obama is leading in national polling averages on Columbus Day, he should win and heaven help all of the Democrats nationwide further down the ticket in a majority of states.

We could re-elect a four year Lame Duck and flip hundreds of offices nationwide as the US Presidency stays Blue and the rest of the elective offices turn bright, if not blood red, as a hard check on Barack Obama.

Won’t that be entertaining?

Michael Zahara
8/12/2012
www.WatchdogWag.com