Well here goes. Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who may or may not be a subversive comic act along the lines of Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, has set his sights on taking down Paul Ryan as we move into the RNC convention.
For the past several years, Paul Ryan has embodied the advanced math side of politics. He has put forward a plan to deal with the nation’s severe entitlement problem, a spending issue so daunting that most politicians prefer to put their pillows back over their heads and pretend it doesn’t exist. President Obama came into office promising to take entitlements seriously, only to demagogue every chance at reforming them.
But here is how Politico’s Martin kicks off his anti-Ryan piece:
Flipping burgers at McDonald’s, steering the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, slinging cheap margaritas, and toning abs and pecs.
That’s about the extent of Rep. Paul Ryan’s private sector experience.
Um, Jon. That’s more private sector experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden have, combined. Obama was a “community organizer” — read: anti-business activist — and Joe Biden was a failed lawyer. Neither are titans of any industry other than spending other people’s money, and in Biden’s case, being wrong about every foreign policy challenge of the past 30-odd years.
Atop the GOP ticket is Mitt Romney. He may have the most private sector experience of any presidential candidate in American history. As in, ever. Romney also has a history of fixing other people’s problems. Together, Romney and Ryan could be seen by a fair-minded person as a problem-solving duo without peer.
Skipping over a few airy paragraphs from Martin, we get to the heart of whatever argument he hopes to make.
What’s more, Romney makes much on of not being a career politician or ever serving in Washington (ignoring, of course, that he could have been in the Senate for nearly two decades had he defeated Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994).
Yet Ryan, 42, has spent the bulk of his career in the capital. The House Budget Committee chairman has been in Congress since he was 28 and before that did stints as a congressional staffer and at the late Jack Kemp’s think tank, Empower America.
And the very small but influential constituency that’s now promoting Ryan hails from the same orbit of GOP thinkers and politicians asRyan. (sic)
Ryan has been in DC for a while, that’s true. But he hasn’t become a creature of the capital’s spendthrift ways and has not succumbed to the go-along-to-get-along ethos that has ruined the place and may sink the nation in debt. Paul Ryan has used his time in Washington to study the budget and propose fixes, something very few others on either side have had the courage to do.
For that, he must be destroyed.
And Jonathan Martin, the scribe who thinks the nation’s most consistently successful governor, Rick Perry, may be dumb because of some bad debate performances and because the same Texas Democrats he shellacks with ease call him childish names, and who called Florida “cracker” country, believes he’s just the man to destroy Paul Ryan.
Unfortunately for Martin, Paul Ryan is far smarter than he is, and no one takes Jonathan Martin very seriously anymore.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member