As I write this, the media's love affair with Paul Ryan is still running hot and heavy. Since rumors of the Ryan pick broke late Friday night, reporters have not been able to say enough nice things about the man: good-looking, remarkably fit (anywhere from 6 to 8 percent body fat, multiple bloggers have cooed; a CNN headline on Monday swooned: "Paul Ryan's workout: Is P90X for you?"), young, a decent public speaker, well-loved in his home district around Janesville, Wisconsin, where he was born and still lives today with his beautiful wife and children. Hell, compared to the stiff, awkward, and biologically unlikable Romney, Ryan is the second coming of George Clooney, with a practiced aw-shucksiness and a closely cultivated cowlick that are meant to imply Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Republicans love Paul Ryan. They repeatedly, and without irony, refer to him as the brains of the Republican Party. In his introduction on Saturday, just before he mistakenly identified the vice presidential candidate as "the next president of the United States," Romney referred to Ryan as an "intellectual leader of the Republican Party." With that weird statement, Romney seemed to be proudly trumpeting the fact that he failed in his own years-long attempts to be his party's leader. What is a presidential candidate if not his own party's ideological and intellectual leader? It felt like an admission from Romney that his candidacy has failed, and so it's up to the kid now...
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