Ryan's Last Hurrah?

No, Paul Ryan is not sitting alone in a movie theater watching Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, getting his popcorn salty with bitter tears of defeat. He's out hunting (literally)... and looking for revenge and couldn't care less that half the pundits in DC blame his extremism for Romney's loss and for the thrashing the GOP took in congressional races. [He claims it wasn't the ideas he culled from Ayn Rand's childish novels that cost the GOP the election but too many colored people voting-- i.e, what he terms "the takers" rather than "the makers."] And believe me, Wall Street still has high-- very high-- hopes for him and his delusional admirers are as firmly in his camp as ever.

This was the main page Blue America used to raise money for House candidates this cycle but it was far from the only page. We had one I was especially fond of called Stop Paul Ryan... and that's a page that goes beyond candidates and cycles. That's a page about ending the political career of the biggest danger facing this country: Paul Ryan. I have every reason to believe Rob Zerban will run against him in 2014. Rob did better than anyone has ever done against Ryan and even beat him in his hometown of Janesville. Rob drew 157,721 votes (43.4%) to Ryan's 199,715 (54.9%). The DCCC adamantly refused to help Zerban and although he met every criterion they threw his way in the hopes of eliminating him, Steve Israel just kept pumping money into hopeless Blue Dog races in districts where no Democrat will win and ignored Zerban. One of the lies the DCCC spouts is that they will target Republicans who fall below 55% in the previous election. That will be the case with Ryan in 2014.

But I have no doubt Steve Israel will never betray his Wall Street donors (who are the same as Ryan's Wall Street donors) by targeting Ryan. It just will.not.happen-- not while Steve Israel is chairman of the DCCC. Israel went so far as to personally call big Democratic donors and demand they not contribute to Zerban's campaign. We're keeping that Stop Paul Ryan page open and I urge you to consider giving regularly-- or at least whenever Ryan does something bad-- which will amount to even more than regularly. This cycle, the money that was contributed on that page to the Blue America PAC went directly into several billboard campaigns, a Super Bowl radio ad and into over two dozen newspaper ads, mostly in Rock County where Zerban beat Ryan 20,902 (52%) to 18,826 (46%). Zerban also won Kenosha County by the same margin.

As in many of the races Blue America worked hardest on, what we built will continue to grow in southeast Wisconsin. And Ryan's day of reckoning draws closer and closer. The GOP rules dictate that he has to leave his seat as chair of the House Budget Committee. There's no chance that will happen. The man who pushed through the TARP bailout for Bush, the hero of the ignorant teabaggers, will be granted an exemption so he can continue working on an agenda that is so destructive to the imbeciles who most strongly and noisily support him.