Paul Ryan?!?

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment

Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate hit us here in Wisconsin especially hard. We'd barely had time to lick our wounds from the defeat that Scott Walker handed us in the recall when we had to contend with reactionary native son Ryan. You could almost hear the collective gasp coming from the mouths of a million Wisconsin progressives.

We understand only too well that the far right of the business class in America likes the aw-shucks, basset-eyed, folksy Wisconsin frontmen. It's easier for politicians like Walker and Ryan to make the billionaire's case than it is for the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson themselves.

Ryan is a good politician. Unlike Romney, he has decent people skills, and because Wisconsin is such a divided state, he's had to hone the art of retail politics. It may appear as though someone broke into Ryan's home and stole all of his ties and then went into his cabinet and ran away with all his sharp razors, but it's a cultivated style. We're supposed to believe he's a man of the people, even though he himself is a millionaire.

And in today's Republican Party, the millionaires do the bidding of the billionaires. That's why Ryan, just three days after getting the nod from Romney, jetted out to Las Vegas. He didn't go there to play the slots or enter a Texas Hold 'Em tournament. He went there to bounce on Sheldon Adelson's knee. The casino owner, after all, has vowed to spend upwards of $100 million to defeat Obama.

Ryan is an Olympic knee-bouncer. He has spent much of his career ingratiating himself to the Koch brothers. (And Romney himself held a fundraiser at one of their mansions in New York this summer.)

The Romney-Ryan ticket is but a mask for the Koch-Adelson ticket.

As soon as he bounded onto the age as the presumptive VP nominee, Ryan took it upon himself to defend Romney's controversial career at Bain Capital. Ryan hailed Romney's "private sector success," saying: "I'm proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy."

Never mind that Romney destroyed a lot of jobs at Bain Capital. For Ryan, there is nothing wrong with being a "vulture capitalist," as Newt Gingrich called Romney during the primaries. Ryan, the disciple of Ayn Rand, actually admires Romney's dihedral wings.

Ryan may be "a decent man," as President Obama has vouched for him. (They are all, all "decent men.") But Ryan's policies are indecent.

None more so than his insistence that a woman be...