While it’s possible the Democrats may gain seats, not even their own political spinmeisters are selling the idea that they’ll make up the 25 they’d need to re-take control. According to a report in The Hill, it’s because party leader Nancy Pelosi’s strategy of using Medicare scare tactics has been “a dud.”

The political Left has consistently used misrepresentation of Medicare and Social Security to gain ground and the tactic has been potent in congressional elections.

In 1986, the Democrats regained Senate control for the final two years of Ronald Reagan’s term because they exploited a Republican proposal that would have means-tested Social Security—required the wealthy elderly to give up some of their benefits to preserve the program’s viability for those who truly need it (I know, ironic isn’t it?).

In 2005, the Democrats regained political momentum by insisting that George W. Bush’s proposal to enable young people to start investing a portion of their Social Security taxes into stock market would destroy the system. The Bush presidency effectively ended with the death of his proposal.

Nancy Pelosi thought she'd be doing a victory dance on Tuesday night. It hasn't worked out that way for House left-wingers.

When Paul Ryan—one of the few Republicans who didn’t cower and shake when the Left’s distortion machine cranked up, was chosen as the GOP vice-presidential nominee—Pelosi salivated. The radical left-wing House Minority Leader was sure she would use his proposal to give vouchers to the elderly as the means to regaining her own power as Speaker of the House.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

One reason is that with Ryan on the ticket, House Republicans couldn’t follow their usual path of cut-and-run the minute a political fight a broke out (as they did quite shamefully in 2005). They had to stand their ground and defend Ryan’s plan and point out that it hardly ends Medicare.

I feel as though I’ve written on this topic until I’m blue in the face, but since the distortions keep coming, the actual facts have to be repeated. And the fact is issuing a voucher to allow an elderly person to buy coverage in the private market is hardly ending Medicare. It is, in fact, enhancing the system. It gives someone more choices to find a plan suitable to them. It requires private companies to compete for business and make their policies customer-friendly…you know, the same logic we rely on in every other walk of economic life. And issuing a voucher for health care is no different than doing one for food, but  I’ve yet to hear Pelosi call for ending Food Stamps as we know it and turning the program into government co-op.

In short, while reasonable people might differ on whether vouchers are as good an idea as I think they are, to say that it leaves the elderly in the cold is a lie. I understand why Pelosi is lying—she wants power. I don’t quite get what rank-and-file Kool-Aid drinkers think they have to gain by cooperating with the distortion.

Its working-class voters, disproportionately Democratic, that really have the most at stake in a true reform of Medicare, and Social Security along with it. The wealthy don’t have to worry about whether the system is inefficient, because their pockets are deep enough to cover it, through purchase of private long-term care insurance and well-funded retirement plans. Someone who works for less can’t afford to see that portion of their paycheck diverted into a system that can’t sustain itself.

The long-term answer is for responsible conservative Democrats to take back their party. The short-term answer on Tuesday is to repeal the imposters who stand in their place and create the opening.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

Romney has been endorsed by many pro-life activists and activist organizations.

Right off the bat, let it be known that Mitt Romney was my fourth choice among the GOP primary candidates.

Check my writing in this space from that time and you’ll see me talking up Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum, with barely a word in support of Romney. Since he won the nomination I’ve written a whole lot about how awful Barack Obama is but still barely anything in favor of Romney.

I think that establishes that this is far from blind loyalty speaking.

I am supporting Mitt Romney wholeheartedly in this election and I would like to share with you why I think you really ought to as well.

It comes down to this: we have a responsibility, as citizens, to be engaged in the public policy process to move public policy in the direction of the true and good. Our most direct and important means of doing this is voting. We are about to vote for President of the United States, the single most powerful secular political office in the world. There are two, and only two, candidates with any chance of winning the presidency next Tuesday. A vote for anyone apart from those two candidates will not affect public policy at. all. If one of the two candidates with a chance to win is morally acceptable then that candidate is eligible for your vote. But further, if one of the two candidates is morally reprehensible, then the other has a lower threshold to overcome to be deserving of your vote.

That applies to voting in general. We as Catholics have special considerations, teachings from our church on what is more or less important when casting a vote. There are five “non-negotiables:” abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, gay “marriage,” and human cloning. We cannot ever support policies that go against the Truth on these matters. Other areas that are negotiable—taxation, capital punishment, social welfare, waging war, etc.—allow for legitimate disagreement within a spectrum guided by Church teaching but ultimately up to the individual’s conscience. In this post I’m not talking about the negotiables.

On those non-negotiables, some seem to think we cannot vote for a candidate who is not darn-near pure as the driven snow. In his recent rather flippant post on such a consequential matter Mark Shea seems to be in this category.

After some undeserved and flimsy shots at Romney and Paul Ryan he concludes:

My point is this: If the five non-negotiables are this negotiable, something is wrong. My idea is that the five non-negotiables really are non-negotiable and that our selective negotiability has, over the past 30 years, cost the prolife movement a whole lot more than it has gained it anything. I think we should return to refusal to negotiate on non-negotiables–and re-evaluate our voting based, not on the negligible impact our vote has on election outcomes, but on the massive impact compromising on non-negotiables has had on the prolife movement.

First, his arguments against Romney in his preceding paragraph read more like sour grapes than anything else. Romney is endorsed by plenty of legitimate, respected pro-life groups and provides ample assurance that he will protect life, religious liberty, and marriage. I did not support Romney in the primary because I believed the other three would be better champions of these causes, but I am not afraid of a Romney presidency, and certainly not as afraid as of four more years of Barack Obama.

But second, based on that paragraph I quoted, which is more important to Shea, the “prolife movement,” or actually affecting public policy for the good over the next four years? He talks up the “prolife movement” at the expense of Romney and Ryan. He disparages the “negligible impact” of our individual sovereign vote. You could almost get the impression that Shea would be okay with four more years of Obama so long as the “prolife movement” gets stronger at some indeterminate point in the future. Ridiculous, and counterproductive for actually moving public policy in the direction of the good and true.

Shea may consider his version of the “prolife movement” more legit than others, but then what kind of movement is it if so many within the main bulk of the movement have already gone another direction?

Regardless of the present power or leadership of the “prolife movement,” public policy will be formed  both over the next four years, as well as in that as-yet unattainable epoch when the “prolife movement” is strong enough to satisfy Shea. It is imperative that we do what we can to affect public policy now, and in the future. Voting is our most immediate and important means of affecting public policy. We live in the now, and the next four years of public policy will likely roll by before that coalescing of the “prolife movement” Shea so desires, so we need to act to affect the now. Romney *is* the only candidate for president who both has a chance to win and is acceptable on the non-negotiables. Romney is not perfect—no one is, not even the three I preferred over him—but the alternative is Barack Obama. And this much is true: If you sit out today and withhold your vote “to teach a lesson,” or in pursuit of ideological purity you will achieve neither in this fallen world of constantly shifting political factions and fads. It just doesn’t happen.

Politics, the rough-and-tumble, back-and-forth competition of coalitions and compromise by which we get public policy, is about doing what you can, when you can, with the team you can put together at the moment, to advance the ball as far as you can, every opportunity you can. Politics is not about taking your ball and going home when you don’t hit the 90-yard touchdown strike on the first play from scrimmage. If you pursue that strategy you will lose, badly, and not be taken seriously by those who are actually trying to, and are content to, advance the ball by increments toward the goal. Trent Dilfer won a Super Bowl, Jeff George did not. Don’t be Jeff George.

George Weigel, writing in National Review Online, essentially agrees:

Catholics who are still pondering their presidential vote will have heard, endlessly, that no political party fully embodies the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. That is certainly true. And it is also largely irrelevant. For the choice in 2012 is not between two parties that, in relative degrees, inadequately embody the Catholic vision of the free and virtuous society. The choice is between a party that inadequately embodies that vision and a party that holds that vision in contempt, as it has made clear in everything from the “HHS mandate” through the Charlotte convention votes against God to the [Lena Dunham] ad. Catholics who do not like their Church, or their vote, or themselves to be held in contempt could make the decisive difference in 2012 — not so much as a “Catholic vote” bloc, but as a community of American citizens determined to restore the decencies to public life and American culture.

(emphases mine)

On religious liberty, abortion, defense of marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, defense of marriage, and human cloning, the question is not, “Is Mitt Romney perfectly, solidly Catholic on these positions?” but “Will Mitt Romney or Barack Obama present the better opportunity to advance public policy toward the true and good, and will either of them be truly deleterious to these causes?”

I make no categorical claim that a President Mitt Romney will have a perfect record on all of these areas—only fools make categorical claims about the future actions of politicians. But the nearest to a categorical claim any of us can make is that Barack Obama, if given the chance, would continue to be the most anti-life, anti-religious liberty president we have ever endured.

So in my view the choice is clear: If you value life and liberty in the way the Church admonishes us to you must vote for Mitt Romney.

Rage Against the Machine's corporate headquarters.

Members of the “Rage Against the Machine” rock group recently gathered easy press accolades by bashing one of their fans.

When Paul Ryan’s appreciation for their music was made public, a member of the group said Ryan is “the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.”

It always strikes me as odd when wealthy, older artists like Rage Against the Machine actually believe the corporate marketing package their record companies have created for them and enriched them with for decades.

To review: Rage Against the Machine’s albums were released by Sony Music Entertainment’s “Epic” Label. Sony Music is the second-largest recorded music company in the world. The controlling Sony corporation is a multinational corporation bigger than Procter & Gamble — bigger than Microsoft.

The group also supports another big corporate interest: abortion. They are all for it.  Women who feel pressured to abort their children often feel rage against the machine that makes their situation feel hopeless. The band is fine with the abortion machine, though.

The group also dislikes Republicans. They headlined a show that coincided with the 2008 Republican National Convention, for which they dressed like Guantanamo prisoners. In fact, they are so against the situation in Guantanamo they are going to repeat the stunt in opposition to Obama’s policies at the Democratic convention… oh, wait, no they’re not. Theirs was a partisan rage, not really a rage against the machine.

The band’s guitarist, Tom Morello, wrote this for Rolling Stone:

“Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta ‘rage’ in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling in front of for campaign contributions.”

This is a very revealing statement. First, it shows that “rage” doesn’t really mean “rage” to these guys. After all, Ryan is not really “enraged” by any of those things. He just has a different opinion about how to serve them.

Second, it reveals Rage Against the Machine’s politics to be … well, the machine’s politics. They must have listened well in public school and they must nod a lot when they listen to NPR, because they have imbibed the dominant political positions that have held sway in most American institutions during their lifetimes.

They don’t Rage Against the Machine. They are Raging for the Machine. And the machine has made them the privileged elite. But the amoral, market-driven Machine that pays them to shout obscenities is one that Catholics should very much be against.

The Church's social vision began its development under Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century

Let’s start with Father Barron’s points. The Church’s modern social doctrine, as developed since the time of Leo XIII in the late 19^th century and continuing through today, has consistently put forth two principles—that the government does have a role to play in protecting society’s most vulnerable. That would be the solidarity part of the equation. But that it’s preferable for as much of this help as possible to be done by the more local form of government—the subsidarity part of the equation.

Furthermore, acknowledging the need for a government role is quite different than acknowledging the primacy of left-wing solutions. McGurn is correct in noting that political left-wingers have a much narrower dogma than anything the Catholic Church herself ever created, and they are much more ruthless in cracking down on heretics. The Wall Street Journal is admittedly an odd venue for this sort of argument, given the paper’s consistent demonization of anyone who contradicts it’s vision of unfettered global free trade, but McGurn’s point is still well-taken.

And thus we come to Paul Ryan. There’s nothing in Ryan’s proposals nor in his general rhetoric that denies the basic premise of a government role. A voucher for Medicare comes from the government. An option that payroll taxes be diverted into a private account rather than the low-return Social Security Trust Fund is enforced by the government.

You might not like these ideas. But to believe they step outside the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy is to have drank the Kool-Aid of the political left within the Church that has voluntarily set itself up as the enforcer of doctrine and crusher of heretics.

There's room in the Catholic Church on both sides of the political aisle, united around defense of the unborn child.

The reality is that whether it’s on faith or political debate, the Catholic Church is in fact rather roomy when it comes to accommodating a wide variety of perspectives. There are naturally core elements of faith that must be accepted, and though political ideas aren’t on the same level of importance, there are general boundaries set up that debate must stay within. When it comes to economics and social justice, there’s really nothing in the mainstream political debate that steps outside of it.

What steps outside the broad and inclusive vision of the Church is the notion that the most vulnerable, the unborn, have no right to existence. It was the choice of one powerful politically constituency in this country to place that right under assault, and they shouldn’t be allowed to cover it up by placing dispute over economics and social justice policies on the same plane, or even pretending that the Catholicity of the ideas is in dispute.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

“The very last thing we ought to be doing is putting at risk the retirement security of millions of America’s seniors,” said Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman, who heads the Democratic National Committee. Of course Ryan’s plan doesn’t do that, while Wasserman defends a system that hinders the financial prospects of the very people she purports to represent.

Paul Ryan's Social Security reform builds a bridge from the system's noble foundations to the 21st century

In spite of the stock market’s recent volatility, no one seriously considers the Social Security Trust Fund to be a better investment. As evidence of this I cite the number of liberals—in the government and out—who have divested their 401(k) funds for the purpose of re-investing with the government. That number would be zero. Actions speaker louder than words.

The Ryan plan does not affect the Social Security payments due to people already retired or close to it. It affects those who are younger, who can build up substantially more income over their working lifetime in the market than they can with the Social Security Trust Fund.

It’s people on middle-to-working-class salaries who are adversely affected by the current system. The wealthy can afford to have their payroll taxes essentially wasted by having them poured into a fund no one of any political ideology really counts on when making personal financial decisions. But if you’re scraping by paycheck to paycheck, you don’t have that same luxury.

I believe in the basic premise of Social Security. I think it’s fair for the government to require that people pay a fixed amount toward their own retirement. That’s a responsibility of living in civil society, at least for those who are able, and doing it ensures the government has the funds to take care of people who need help through circumstances not of their own choosing. But the means to exercise that responsibility should be left to the individual person. If they prefer to structure a retirement package around private accounts, then that’s a legitimate choice that should be honored.

When Social Security was passed in the 1930s the opportunities for mass investment in the stock market didn’t exist for ordinary people to the extent they do today. Social Security was rightfully considered the mark of being a “progressive” in that day and age. It’s a mark of what’s happened on the political Left that “progressive” today is in fact blindly reactionary, willfully obstructing the progress of the Social Security system into the 21^st century and allowing more people to capitalize on the long-term benefits of increasing investment in the stock market.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

Now that Democrats have had the opportunity to live through the gaffe-filled Vice Presidency of Joe Biden, some in the blogosphere are calling on Obama to tap Secretary of State Clinton as his 2012 running mate.

According to Ed Klein, author of the bestselling book “The Amateur,” Clinton was approached by a top Obama aid a couple weeks ago to see if she was interested in the position but that she turned it down after speaking with Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.

No one knows if Klein is telling the truth, but it’s not hard to imagine that team Obama would be looking to change things up a bit, considering Mitt Romney’s decision to select Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his VP has given him the lead over President Obama in several important polls.

In light of his popularity, the media has attempted to portray the young Wisconsinite as a sort of un-caring, budget-cutting, fiscal grim reaper.

Joe Biden, in an effort to cast Ryan in an even darker light, told audiences in North Carolina that even though Ryan was a nice guy, his budgets reflect a poor value set. “My [dad] had a lot of wisdom,” Biden said, and every time someone told him what’s important to them, “my dad would go, ‘No, no. Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.’”

What Vice President Biden forgot to mention is that it’s been over 1,200 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget, during which time roughly $5 trillion dollars has been added to the national debt. The president’s promise to “cut the deficit in half” before his first term must have also slipped Biden’s memory. But that’s fine, he’s probably a little tired after spending all that stimulus money during last year’s “recovery summer.”

Strangely enough, some columnists still think that more stimulus and higher tax rates is just what America needs right now, and that Jesus would have wanted it that way.

TIME contributor Erika Christakis recently claimed that “As near as we can tell, Jesus would advocate a tax rate somewhere between 50%…and 100%.” Adding that Sister Simone Campbell, one of the primary coordinators of the George Soros-funded Nuns on the Bus campaign, considers Paul Ryan’s budget proposals “unpatriotic” and “immoral.”

Unpatriotic and immoral? Where have we heard those words before? Oh yeah, from President Obama when he was running for president in 2008 at a campaign event in Fargo, North Dakota. It was there where then-Senator Obama called it “unpatriotic” for President Bush to add $4 trillion dollars to the national debt.

To be fair, there are aspects of the Romney/Ryan plan that haven’t won the approval of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but there’s much more ignorance of Catholic teaching in President Obama’s policies, and to suggest that Jesus would want a tax rate between 50 and 100 percent is downright blasphemous.

As CV blogger Tom Crowe points out, “there is no ‘give,’ in the sense Christ meant it, in ‘taxation.’ ‘Tax rate’ means the percentage of your earnings that the government demands of you by law and that you must surrender to said government or face punishment. If Christ’s words are to have any significance whatever, ‘give’ must mean a willing and intentional surrender or transfer of ownership.”

Take note, Joe Biden. Take note.

Stephen Kokx is an adjunct professor of political science and a featured columnist at RenewAmerica.com. Follow him on twitter

Paul Ryan may have said some flattering things about Ayn Rand, but he's no Objectivist

Some of the more well-known criticisms leveled against Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is that his budget unfairly attacks the poor, his ideas promote Social Darwinism, and that he wants to push Grandma off a cliff. Expect Democrats to regurgitate these talking points ad nauseam until Election Day. But perhaps the most absurd claim against Ryan is that he’s a disciple of the late Ayn Rand, the 20th century philosopher and atheist who founded the school of thought known as “Objectivism.”

Rand, a Russian-born immigrant who moved to America in the mid 1920s, was a prolific writer whose support for rugged individualism and laissez-faire capitalism was best illustrated in her novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” both of which have become cult classics for college-age conservatives and libertarians.

In her own words, Rand states that her philosophy is essentially one that views man as a “heroic being,” a being who understands “happiness as the moral purpose of his life, productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Rand’s views, to say the least, run counter to Catholic teaching when it comes to, among other things, morality, economics, and the role of reason. So when Ryan told the Washington D.C.-based, Rand-supporting Atlas Society back in 2005 that he was a huge fan of her ideas, progressives lambasted him for embracing a worldview that they say defends the rich at the expense of the poor. It also allowed Jim Wallis, founder of the Evangelical Christian website Sojouners, to suggest that Ryan’s budgets were more inspired by Rand than by Jesus Christ.

To be sure, prudential judgments can be made about the best way to lift people out of poverty, but to claim that Ryan’s budgets, documents that emphasize the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity, economic freedom, intergenerational justice, and fiscal sanity, are Objectivist-inspired pieces of work is a bit of a stretch.

When speaking with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo last year, Ryan explained his views on Rand: “She, through her novels, did a very good job of defending the morality of the free enterprise system.” But “Objectivism, by definition, requires atheism. So how on earth can a devout Catholic consider themselves an Objectivist?”

Although “Atlas Shrugged” inspired him as a young adult, Ryan told National Review’s Robert Costa that it’s a stretch to assume that he considers himself a Rand devotee: “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas.”

Rand’s philosophy might not square nicely with Catholic social teaching, but her emphasis on man as an end in and of himself and the importance of democratic capitalism actually does, and Ryan is right to highlight that.

In fact, the same could be done for 19th century philosopher Karl Marx. Marx, along with Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto, coined the phrase “workers of the world, unite!” Does that mean that everyone supportive of labor unions is a Marxist? Of course not. But even Pope Leo XIII knew that there was a kernel of truth in what he was saying. That’s why his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum emphasized the importance of just wages, safe working conditions and the right to form unions.

The reality is that anyone who thinks Ryan is bringing an Objectivist outlook to the Republican ticket will be sorely disappointed. He may appreciate what Ayn Rand wrote in regards to free markets, but he’s not going to be asking groups like the Atlas Society for advice if he assumes the role of vice president. You can be sure of that.

Stephen Kokx is an adjunct professor of political science and a featured columnist at RenewAmerica.com. Follow him on twitter

Paul Ryan is now the man of the hour on the Republican ticket

Ryan has built a national name for himself as the voice for Republican economic policies from his chairmanship of the House Budget Committee. His proposals, particularly with regards to Medicare, are innovative and in an ideal world they would be seen as a way to forge a new path to social justice, by taking the foundation of Democratic programs from FDR through LBJ and allowing them to progress into the 21^st century through appropriate use of vouchers and market forces.

Of course the world we live in is less than ideal and instead of being seen as the middle-ground consensus policies they really are, the political Left, which thrives on group-think and a lack of independent thought, has chosen to characterize Ryan’s proposals as a “let them eat cake”.  It’s false, but it’s a falsehood that will be difficult to overcome between now and November.

That, in of itself, is not the biggest problem though. Ryan’s an articulate spokesman and it’s also possible that a chance to present himself on a national stage—especially in the coming debate with Vice-President Joe Biden might turn public opinion in his favor. The real problem is the political impact of Romney’s choice.

Florida senator Marco Rubio could have delivered the Sunshine State and appealed to the Hispanic vote

Ryan may come from Wisconsin, a key battleground state, but as a House member he’s never won a statewide race, so it’s up in the air as to whether he can help Romney overcome a persistent Obama lead here. And even if he can, Wisconsin is not Florida when it comes to electoral prospects. Florida senator Marco Rubio has won a statewide race in a more important locale and has the residual appeal of offering something to the Hispanic community, whose votes will be so important in this election.

So congratulations to Paul Ryan on his selection and on balance I do think he helps the ticket. But Rubio would have helped more.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1) Ryan is a serious plans and actions man, and has already shown his mettle in a policy fight. From schooling Obama to his increasingly displeased face (seriously: watch that one and note the cutaways to Obama’s face. Money.) on healthcare reform, to explaining a serious plan to get government spending under control, to dealing with ridiculous demagogues who will say any old thing, he shows a command of the facts, a comfort with his own ideas, and a stiff spine.

2) Refocuses the conversation. Romney’s biggest liability thus far has been his timidity and lack of laying out specific ideas or policy proposals. He has focused his part of the debate on “jobs,” which is good and proper, but with precious few details. Plus, Romney has lost a couple of message cycles by being on the defensive over a few failing companies that Bain bought and shuttered, and the manufactured furor over his tax returns. Ryan is synonymous with his budget plan and entitlement reform. Considering the Democrat-led Senate has not passed a budget in over three years talking about a reasonable budget proposal cannot be a bad thing.

3) Related to the previous point: On budget numbers and the fiscal train wreck this country is heading toward, Ryan will not be outdone by any of the other three men on the tickets. With his time on the Budget Committee he has been more intimately involved in the numbers than pretty much anyone else and won’t need to quickly bone up in order to talk intelligently on the most pressing issues.

4) Related to the previous two points: this instantly makes the vice presidential debate Must Watch TV. The only way it could get better would be if the Dems could have Obama pinch-hit for Biden so he received the schooling rather than the hapless Biden.

Congressman Ryan, wife Jenna, and their kids.

5) Obviously, he’s a stellar pick from the social conservative standpoint. Good on life, stem cell research, marriage, school choice, and religious liberty.

6) Is this the first time there is not a single mainline Protestant on either major ticket? I’d bet it is. Two Catholics* at the veep level, and a Mormon vs. whatever Obama is at the POTUS level. Not sure what that says, but I think it’s worth noting as a data point for the mainline Protestant denominations that have dominated our politics for so many years.

7) One report said that Romney picked Ryan more than a week ago. Why not announce it until today? A few thoughts. Ryan may have needed a full week to talk it over with his family and get their full buy-in. Romney may have wanted to wait for a lull in the news to dominate a news cycle, or to use it to change the conversation at a key moment (an early Saturday announcement seems to suggest the former isn’t so, but the spurious “Romney gave my wife cancer” meme would be worth tamping). Ryan may have held off giving full acceptance until Romney agreed to allow him to be himself rather than be “managed” by Romney peeps in the manner Sarah Palin reportedly was four years ago by McCain peeps.

8 ) Hellooooo, religious liberty! A Mormon and a Catholic on the GOP ticket. And I’m not tempted at all to include a “y” in either of those designators!

All in all, this really makes this election paradigm-shifting, and in a good way.

——

*Biden is Catholic, though he falls into that category who, through his manifest and persistent public policy positions and advocacy, is not *in* communion so he ought not present himself *for* Communion. But we continue to pray that public sinners may publicly repent and become, once more, fully Catholic. Imagine the impact he could have if he were to reverse course and become an advocate for the evils of dissenting positions he presently holds…