Stench-Gilligan 2012

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Note that is not an anonymous, unnamed source.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

I never thought the Republicans would run McCain-Palin 2.0. But then I was fairly worried they would nominate Rick Perry.

Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)

This is a locomotive pulling a coal feeder and five passenger cars going over a cliff. A slow motion train wreck. Watching Roger Goodell fumble the NFL's reputation by standing behind scab refs that were fired by the Lingerie Football League is pretty funny as far as clusterfucks go, but this nickname game is simply hilarious.

Roger Simon at Politico even took a shit on Microsoft, for Pete's sake.

(Ryan) did a PowerPoint presentation for the crowd.

According to the National Journal, be began thusly: “I’m kind of a PowerPoint guy, so I hope you’ll bear with me,’ Ryan told the audience as he began clicking through four slides, which showed graphs depicting U.S. debt held by the public from 1940 to present, debt per person in the United States, percentage of debt held by foreign countries and a breakdown of federal spending. He then launched into a 10-minute monologue on the federal debt.”

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.

Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.

PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.

Ryan’s PowerPoint slides were officially labeled: “Our Unsustainable Debt (U.S. Debt Held by Public as a Share of Economy),” “Your Share of the Debt,” “Who Funds Our Reckless Spending?” and “How the Government Spends Your Money.”

The Romney campaign was furious. But Ryan reportedly said, “Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.” 

Don't get overconfident, Democrats. Romney will make a little comeback next week and throughout October as the debates give him some life. He's had a lot of practice over the past twelve months, and lots of rehearsal lately. But the only question in my mind is not whether the Democrats can hold the Senate; it's whether they can actually return the gavel to Speaker Pelosi.

That would certainly trigger the rumored Republican meltdown.

Stand far back, so that you don't get too much brain matter splashed on you.