Paul Ryan? I'm excited!

The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Illinois Wisconsin, will be Mitt Romney’s running mate. Originally, the founders intended for the second place candidate for President to become Vice-President. One may suppose that was viewed as the best way to assure the former political rival would be relegated to irrelevancy. I suspect the purpose of this move was to assure that, once the election was over, it was over. That’s a good plan.

As concerns the issue of political irrelevancy, I can only recall reports of John Nance Garner’s comment on the office. He said the office of Vice-President is “not worth a warm bucket of spit.” I have always doubted that he said “spit,” but history is history.

Today Paul Ryan matters; He is a mean, contentious, unfeeling, former admirer of Ayan Rand. Frankly, I’ll give the man credit for sensing that there might be a slight problem with Rand’s ultra-individualistic view on society and her crude economic theories. Ryan has a platform to bedevil the President and push his own heartless agenda of stealing from the disabled and elderly to subsidize the wealthy. Next January, he will be Vice-President of the United States and join the ranks of Spiro Agnew, Daniel D. Tompkins, and Levi P. Morton.

Mind you, I expect Mitt Romney to win, perhaps narrowly. Nonetheless, a “w” is a “w” and isn’t that what politics is all about anyway? It may be that Romney has solidified his party’s base. If that is true, this was both a bold and wise move. What this really tells us is how much influence the Tea Party element enjoys in the GOP.Just for the record, I am not jumping up and down over the (unlikely) prospect of a second Obama term. Can the nation survive four more years of capitulation to big money and the threat of foreign wars?

There are harder times ahead for the United States of America.

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