The Romney-Ryan Ticket: Thoughts from the Jurassic

I've witnessed every election since the cliffhanger between Republisaurus Tex and Dennis Democriraptor -- we dinosaurs are still talking about that one, over a hundred million years later! -- so here are a few walnut-brained observations that may nonetheless prove nutritious:

1. Lissenup, "you libs" (as the trolls like to call us), take a hint from every more or less sentient pundit or pol since at least Machiavelli: don't misunderestimate your opponent. Sure, Romney probably picked Paul Ryan because he realizes that at present, he's unequivocally on the wrong end of the Charlie Sheen winning/losing equation. Why else would he choose a purist so popular with the rather awkwardly large tea-wing of his party? But that simple-dino fact doesn't lead us to the proper strategy to use against the Romney-Ryan ticket. Read on….

2. By not misunderestimating the opponent, I mean the following: Paul Ryan may not be my idea of an über-intellectual – he apparently has a bachelor's degree in poli-sci from a reputable school – but to many thought-starved so-called conservatives, the fellow is worshiped as just short of a deity. Now that sounds like liblizard-intellectual snark, and in part it is, but here's the real point: Representative Ryan comes across as an earnest, serious young man, and not necessarily an unlikable one. He no doubt wants to be seen as a younger version of Ronald Reagan, and Reagan wasn't called "the Teflon Prez" for nothing. So that is a real strength for Paul Ryan. Don't mock him mercilessly in personal terms because that's not only in bad taste, but it won't stick. It won't stick for the same reason the Batcrap Right™ attacks against one Barack Hussein Obama generally don't work: the minute the man himself opens his mouth, all sane people realize that the batcrap version is – well, batcrap. Obama seems like the earnest, personable college professor who lives across the street from you, not a fire-breathing terrorist-atheist-Marxist-radical-Islamist dragon bent on simultaneously (and psychotically) Sovietizing America and instituting Sharia Law. Don't try to make Paul Ryan look like Attila the Hun -- he isn't, and people will hold such a negative characterization against you, not him. Liberals tried to pull the same thing on Reagan with lots of overwrought "warmonger" and "idiot" characterizations, and it obviously failed miserably because millions of people sort of liked the guy.

3. DO take on Ryan's ideas – I view them as college dorm stuff and easily assailable at a level that need not be, and should not be, overly technical. His ideas seem to come from Ayn Rand, frankly, and he's a known praiser of Randian philosophy. Avoid getting bogged down in the tiny details of his very bad budget since anyone can spin numbers and you know the GOP can. What they shouldn't be allowed to spin, though, is the general tone or attitude that the budget projects. And here's the key thing to reversing any advantages Ryan may bring to Mr. Romney: for all his civility and seeming sincerity, I think it's eminently fair AND effective to say forcefully that Ryan's notions mark an ABANDONMENT OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING WE HAVE ACHIEVED SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. I'm suggesting a reverse-Reagan strategy here: Obama should cast himself – honestly, I believe – as the real optimist in this race, while the Romney-Ryan ticket is the one that is in effect calling bull on the Reaganesque meme, "Morning in America." If you're for the Ryan budget, I say, you must believe America's best days are behind, and there's little to recommend our future to us but semi-Malthusian gloom and, at best, a scenario not unlike the old political joke about the conservative whose idea of saving a drowning person 100 feet offshore is to toss out ten feet of rope and shout encouragement – or in Ryan's case, heartfelt admonishments about the power of individual effort from one of Ayn Rand's novels. Medicare? Social Security? Sorry – all we got is ten feet of rope. But you have to MAKE this case again and again, forcefully -- not trash Paul Ryan personally. You have to define him first and irretrievably as a candidate whose ideas cut against American optimism, against any genuine prospects for "morning in America." Fail to do that, and lots of people might just support the young man's earnest rhetoric about personal and fiscal responsibility rather than seeing it for the admission of national, collective failure it really is. This is important because Paul Ryan is NOT Sister Sarah, Herman 999 Cain, or Mars-Happy Newt: what's in accepting a veep-candidate spot for him in 2012 may well be a presidential run in 2016 or even 2020, when he will, after all, be only 50 years old.

Finally, it won't do simply to remain at the general level, of course: the case has to be driven home that while Mr. Ryan's ideas may have a certain consistency and surface attractiveness about them, they will without any doubt do specific, real harm to real people: to ordinary, hard-working people who will be told that America is a field of dreams for the very very rich and privileged and that there's no help to be expected anymore when life kicks you in the teeth.  I believe that is quite simply THE TRUTH about Paul Ryan's political philosophy -- it is not a distortion, and there is no reason to be shy or hesitant about driving it home without any walking back or dissimulating or temporizing.