The "Palinization" of Paul Ryan Begins

Wait for it...

Before Mitt Romney even made the official announcement that Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan would be his pick for vice president, the mere speculation was enough to fire up the Liberal punditry and begin the assault. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker  filed the first attack piece just hours before the news was known, and the hypocrisy of it was instantly apparent.

In the opening paragraph of his piece, Lizza speculates that if the pick is Ryan, Romney will have "made the most daring decision of his political career." Lizza's reason is because he believes that there are many "risks" in a Ryan pick, the most ominous of which is what Lizza cites as Ryan's lack of "significant private-sector experience". (Sarah Palin redux, anyone?).

Lizza sniffs that Ryan's jobs at McDonalds, the family construction business or "waiting tables as a young Washington staffer" are meaningless, as private sector experience goes. He even "worries" aloud that Ryan is a comparable light-weight for the business-savvy Romney. But then Lizza doubles down on absurdity when he also complains of the lightness of Paul Ryan's Washington experience.

As I read the piece, I immediately thought of the comparisons to then-senator Obama in 2008 and his own qualifications to be president of the United States. Obama never had any job, not even at McDonalds, and he was running for POTUS after only 143 days as a U.S. senator. Ryan has been in Congress for fourteen years. Naturally, I wondered how Mr. Ryan Lizza felt about the chances of an even lighter Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.

It didn't take long to find out. I found an article by Lizza  in The New Yorker from July 21, 2008 in which the author took fifteen pages to gush about the rising star of Barack Hussein Obama. Throughout the entire article there is not one bit of evidence that Lizza was concerned over the lack of experience in the candidate to actually become president, yet now he frets that Ryan lacks the experience to be a "potential president". The reasoning behind the absence of Lizza's concern in 2008 is stunning:

Pritzker, whose family, one of the wealthiest in Chicago, owns the Hyatt hotel chain, was as crucial to Obama’s next campaign as Toni Preckwinkle’s was to his first. “We were talking about whether he was ready to do this or not,” Pritzker told me. She was blunt, telling Obama, “As I see it, the two things that you’re going to need to address are your executive leadership skills, because your résumé doesn’t have that in it, and the second would be your credentials in national security.” Obama returned with an organizational chart indicating how the campaign would be structured—one of his great tactical advantages over the disorganized Clinton campaign—along with a list of advisers. Pritzker agreed to become his finance chair. 

That "Pritzker agreed to become his finance chair" after her concerns over Obama's experience were apparently allayed by his production of an organizational chart seems to be good enough for Lizza. The hypocrisy is blinding.

This is only the beginning, too, and we can expect to see the mainstream media throw all they've got at Paul Ryan in the coming months. How fortunate for them this time that they only have to travel to Wisconsin for their dumpster-diving forays, instead of trekking all the way up to Alaska.

Hey, maybe they'll even find an old picture of Paul Ryan shooting a moose!

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