Ryan As Omen

It was just fifteen days ago that Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan for the campaign co-pilot seat, and they've been in rough skies ever since.

Ryan spent the first few days saying he wasn't really trying to kill Medicare as we know it, then burned up part of a week by denying, then admitting that, yes, he had solicited funds from the very federal stimulus program he'd repeatedly condemned.

And just as that fire was put out, sort of, Ryan's legislative far-right pally Todd Akin burst on to the scene with his now-infamous screwy suggestion that raped women could magically prevent their pregnancies and thus were not entitled to abortions - - misogynist cruelty on par with the proposal Akin and Ryan had endorsed in the House of Representatives to limit federally-funded abortions to only women who had been raped "forcibly."

Ryan had become the Dick Tracy comic strip character with a personal rain cloud over his head - - and just as Ryan was to jet off for the Tampa Convention a bigger, legitimate storm - - Hurricane Isaac - - took aim at the Florida Gulf Coast and has already cut at least one day off four days of GOP hoopla there.

They say national party nominating conventions are intentionally superficial and scripted, but this one won't escape some discussion of changing climate extremes - - Ryan voted against measures to stem greenhouse gas emissions (see a report on Ryan's record, p. 136) - - even if the Tampa event puts more climate change deniers under one roof than attended the last ALEC reunion.

And as Florida first responders are pressed into action with the approaching hurricane, Romney may wish he hadn't said the lesson of Scott Walker's recall election win was that we didn't need more firefighters and police officers. 

Tampa had already heavily borrowed police from across Florida to help with convention security, and that was before Isaac began to bear down on the convention city.

Nothing has gone right for the the GOP since Ryan loped into an oddly-choreographed early Saturday morning news conference/photo op on the dock off the USS Wisconsin, now a museum ship permanently tied up in Virginia.

It's still a long way to November 6th - - but shorter by two weeks, and counting, then when Ryan joined Team Romney.

Rocky takeoff for sure, in part because Ryan didn't use those two lost weeks to show us he's ready to sit in the Captain's seat.

In fact, he hasn't looked much different than Dan Quayle, 2.0.

Cross-posted at The Political Environment.