Paul Ryan and his mother will be touring Florida this weekend and will be visiting the Villages, a large retirement center north of Orlando. I conjured such a Ryan trip to the Villages in a recent blog post here but admit that I completely mis-underestimated the potential leverage of Ryan bringing his mother along for the ride. In contrast to Romney, who shower-sang "America the Beautiful" at the Villages a few weeks ago, Ryan is likely to generate the best T.V. footage of the campaign there.

No finer, insulated, Republican, Senior, Medicare recipient, controlled audience, tight restrictions venue could have been invented for Ryan than taking his Mom to the Villages. I can't wait to see just the two of them having lunch at a company-owned restaurant in a faux, Disney-like "town square". Perhaps in deference to his Mom the ever intrusive, prison-yard-like loud speakers will be silenced. Well, the Villagers would probably enjoy listening to Paul Ryan and his Mom rather than Fox News and Paul Harvey---at least on this one Saturday.

Ryan needs a sure bet like a hoot n' anny at the Villages to balance out a weak performance atop the mixed-messaged national stage onto which Romney threw him---a week in which Mitt's flip flopping on the Ryan budget vs. the Romney budget was laughable stuff. Romney managed to step on Ryan's mix all week long---reinvigorating the tax return issue, using a silly and ultra-amateurish white board display to Perot-ize the Medicare debate---and worst of all, wasting two days in a hyperbolic response to the bait which Biden dangled in front of him. Romney was a counter melody and a complete distraction to the Ryan rollout. And doesn't the campaign hand book say that the Veep is supposed to attack the other side? But maybe Romney's campaign was providing cover for Ryan who wasn't really all that impressive either out on the stump or in T.V. interviews.

After spending his adult life building a mythical narrative about his purist and intellectual qualifications, Ryan has found himself in a box and a compromised position. It took about one day for the Press to point out that Ryan was a player in the Bush spending spree. Then Ryan had to cover his tracks on his own $700 Billion "cuts" in Medicare with wonk-ish gibberish---"Obama did it first", or maybe it should be, "Mommy, don't blame me, Obama hit little Medicare first".

Ryan's interview with Brit Hume was classic "hand in the cookie jar" material. Then yesterday in Cincinnati, Ryan fumbled his response to a question about seeking Stimulus money for his own district. Frankly, of all the possible attacks on Ryan's mythical purist character, the stimulus money request letters are the most cutting, in my opinion, because his two-faced ploy is black and white. He criticized Obama's stimulus, then admitted that it would create 7,600 jobs in his own district. Throwing his staff under the bus makes Ryan look all the more disingenuous. But there is always this:---"Mommy, my staff sent that letter, not me."

Now my intent is not to discredit Ryan's mother. If my mother were still on this earth she would have done exactly the same thing Ryan's mother is doing---if I had asked her. But I'd like to think I would not have dragged my own mother out on such a blatant political ploy as pretending to preserve Medicare, a successful government program, when my underlying motive was to privatize the program for the benefit of the healthcare industry.  

Apparently toting Mom along to defend Republican preservation of Medicare is the du jour advertising tactic for Republican candidates up and down the races. And such a tactic is likely to generate a certain amount of sympathy. But fissures in Ryan's resume are opening up on a daily basis, and I am not sure Mom can make those go away. 

My cousin, Eddie, who lives in the Villages and most likely will be hootin' and hollerin' for Ryan, had a misogynistic joke back in high school which, mostly, he himself laughed at. "You know, Oxy, that girl has an hour glass figure---but the bottom half's missing." Har, Har. I don't suppose that joke goes over very well in a retirement setting, but I think there is a big part of Ryan's resume which has been missing. Looking beyond the phenomenal hordes of salivating-Senior-photo-ops in the Villages, there will be many more days to scrutinize Ryan when he comes back out on the school yard by himself.