The Devil being the evil man known as Paul Ryan.
Shylock:
"I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you."
The Merchant of Venice (I, iii, 35-39)
Shakespeare had Ryan's number, long before the evil spawn of the devil was born.
Long time readers of this blog should remember-that I am not just some Johnny come lately when it comes to hating Paul Ryan. I have despised him and prayed for the early demise of the "zombie eyed granny starver" -long before it was fashionable to do so. Of course previously, wishing for the bad man's early, painful, and untimely demise was simply a statement that might have been in questionable taste.
Now, it could earn me a visit from the Secret Service.
Because Romney proved yet again-who really runs the GOP, and its not the rational minded people. It is the Greedy Selfish pigs who make up the party of those who pretend to like tea.
Its good news for the Obama campaign-because the personage of Ryan allows the other side to unmask the evil that lurks at the heart of all GOP policy prescriptions. And the more the people get to see about the selfish purposes at the heart of the Ryan budget, I believe the less they will like it. Plus it allows the campaign to accurately quote the dedication with which the zombie eyed granny starver has set out to screw the average American.
Charles Pierce of Esquire sums it up well:
Leave it to Willard Romney, international man of principle, to get himself bullied into being bold and independent.
Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead. This is unimaginable to those of us who lived here under Romney's barely perceptible stewardship of the Commonwealth (God save it!). If he'd even hinted that he agreed with a fraction of a smidgen of a portion of the policies on which Ryan has built his career, Romney would have been hanging from the Sacred Cod by the middle of 2005. And it's hard not to notice that the way the decision got leaked — in the dead of a Friday night, with the Olympics still going on, after two weeks in which Romney and his campaign had demonstrated all the political skills of a handball — fairly dripped with flopsweat.
(And how'd you like to be poor Tim Pawlenty, being told by Tagg Romney that he'll be riding in the roof carrier to Iowa again, with nothing in his future except, maybe, a couple of bucks at Christmas.)
Which is not to say this isn't a shrewd move. In one great swoop, Willard has recaptured a good portion of the elite political media, which has been crushing on Ryan's "courage" to take on the "tough choices" — none of which, it should be pointed out, likely will affect Ryan, who's already got himself an education out of the social safety net he now intends to shred, and certainly will never affect the haircut at the top of the ticket, or his great-grandchildren, for all that — and the coverage of the pick in the middle of the night showed that many of our finer chattering heads are already practicing tying the stem of the cherry with their tongues in preparation for covering the new Republican ticket. On CNN, at about 1:35 this morning, Wolf Blitzer was already warning Democrats not to get too cocky in the face of Paul Ryan's mighty intellect. "In 1980," Wolf told us, "Democrats were high-fiving when the Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan."
(And can we have an end to that myth, please? At this point in the nominating process in 1980, the Democratic party was ripping out its own guts in the worst intraparty squabble since the blood ran in Grant Park in 1968. I can assure you that the Reagan people knew this to be true, and a lot of the Democrats, especially the ones lined up behind Ted Kennedy, knew full well what a wounded incumbent Carter was, because many of them had gone out of their way since 1977 to wound him. The regulars hated him as much as they'd hated George McGovern in 1972. The difference was that Carter had won. Liberty Under Siege, by the late Walter Karp, is the ur-text on this subject. We continue.)
Paul Ryan should be a Godsend to the Democratic party. Of course, that presumes they have the smarts to intelligently carve him apart simply using his own words. Unfortunately, that's not a safe assumption. The Democrats are masters at self destruction even when the opposition opens themselves to totally justified attack-as is the case with this VP pick.
But do not kid yourself, this is repeat of Sarah Palin. Except Ryan is smarter than she is-and a lot, lot, more evil.
What I will enjoy is brutally attacking him over the next three months. Everyone needs a mission-I now have mine.