What’s Wrong With All of Them?

Ok.  Let’s start with the top.

Reince Priebus, the Chair of the Republican National Committee thinks “it’s ridiculous” that 63 percent of the American public thinks presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney should release more tax returns.

So now, the likes of me are “ridiculous” and to be simply dismissed.  No room for discussion.  No room for disagreement.  No room for intellectual debate.  Sixty-three percent of us are simply, “ridiculous.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney reminded us last week, that we are not Israel.

“It’s individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America,” said Romney. “What America is, is not a collective where we all work in a Kibbutz or we all in some little entity, instead it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.”

Next up, he reminded us we are not Japan.

During his speech at a Thursday fund-raiser, the Republican candidate remarked, "We are not Japan. We are not going to be a nation that suffers in decline and distress for a decade or a century."

Who is next to insult, on the not-ready-for-prime-time tour?

Oh, and just call Senator Republican Leader Mitch McConnell – obstructionist.  From Greg Sargent over at Plum Line, in the Washington Post, quoting Michael Grunwald’s new book on the making of the stimulus:

Grunwald has Joe Biden on the record making a striking charge. Biden says that during the transition, a number of Republican Senators privately confided to him that Mitch McConnell had given them the directive that there was to be no cooperation with the new administration — because he had decided that “we can’t let you succeed.” 

Here’s the relevant passage, from page 207: 

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden says. The vice president says he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.

Now, on to the VP sweepstakes…

Thinking maybe there is one high-profile Governor from Louisiana who has been struck from the list:

Thanks to a new law privatizing public education in Louisiana, Bible-based curriculum can now indoctrinate young, pliant minds with the good news of the Lord—all on the state taxpayers' dime. 

Under Gov. Bobby Jindal's voucher program, considered the most sweeping in the country, Louisiana is poised to spend tens of millions of dollars to help poor and middle-class students from the state's notoriously terrible public schools receive a private education. While the governor's plan sounds great in the glittery parlance of the state's PR machine, the program is rife with accountability problems that actually haven't been solved by the new standards the Louisiana Department of Education adopted two weeks ago. 

For one, of the 119 (mostly Christian) participating schools, Zack Kopplin, a gutsy college sophomore who's taken to Change.org to stonewall the program, has identified at least 19 that teach or champion creationist nonscience and will rake in nearly $4 million in public funding from the initial round of voucher designations.

And please, please, please make it Wisconsin Representative (and House Budget Chair) Paul Ryan.  For one, conservatives seem to really think they can manipulate Romney into making the pick – which says a lot about Romney’s relationship with ALL sectors of the Republican Party.  No one seems to believe he stands for ANYTHING.  From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal:

The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest group dominated decline. 

Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda—before it becomes a crisis that requires savage cuts. And he has done so as part of a larger vision that stresses tax reform for faster growth, spending restraint to prevent a Greek-like budget fate, and a Jack Kemp-like belief in opportunity for all. He represents the GOP's new generation of reformers that includes such Governors as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and New Jersey's Chris Christie.
As important, Mr. Ryan can make his case in a reasonable and unthreatening way. He doesn't get mad, or at least he doesn't show it. Like Reagan, he has a basic cheerfulness and Midwestern equanimity.

Let’s see.  Decimating Social Security and Medicare vs. “basic cheerfulness and Midwestern equanimity.”  We’ll see who can win that one.

And the Wall Street Journal isn’t the only conservative mouthpiece on board with Paul Ryan.  The National Review, here.

For a long time now, I have thought for sure it would be Ohio Senator Rob Portman.  Now, I am not so sure.  I am starting to think Mitt Romney really wants someone he likes and gets along well with, on the ticket.  And yes, someone who is a lot like him.  Alike.  Sort of like Clinton-Gore. 

That just might be former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.