Time To Get Serious About Defeating Paul Ryan-- For Real

According to an article in The Hill yesterday, the DCCC is running their generic anti-Ryan billboard against 14 Republicans who voted to end Medicare. The article mentions Charlie Bass (NH), Sean Duffy (WI), Steve King (IA), Dan Lungren (CA) and Steve Southerland (FL) and the video attached to the campaign includes Dan Benishek (MI), Scott Tipton (CO), Pat Meehan (PA), Renee Ellmers (NC) and Joe Heck (NV), as well as Southerland. That's 10. I guess we could take a road trip and find the other generic billboards-- none of which are savvy enough to mention the Democrat and none of which are savvy enough to reinforce the War Against Women meme by using a woman instead of a generic-looking gentleman who many people will mistake for the Congressman and... drive away confused. We know from a flurry of press coverage that the person-- unmentioned in the video or in the Hill article, who should be the posterchild for this DCCC war against Ryan-- Rob Zerban-- also had a board stuck up in a remote location in Ryan's hometown. At least they included WI-1 for a change! Blue America would like to show the DCCC how to do a billboard campaign. Here's ours:


And we're not hiding it away in some remote corner of the district. We're renting the single best location where the most voters will see it-- the message and Rob Zerban's name. Can you help us put this board up all over WI-1? We have an I.E. Committee (Independent Expenditure) dedicated to this project right now. Every cent that goes into it will be used to put up these billboards. Let's get serious about defeating Paul Ryan and stop the DCCC game playing and pussyfooting. Barney Frank was dead on yesterday when he told TPM that Ryan is nothing but a Great Scam and an "ideologically driven extremist who doesn’t deserve his reputation within the political establishment as a genuine fiscal hawk."

“It’s not deficit reduction when you increase military spending so that you can make up for that by cutting Medicare and Medicaid. That’s not budget reduction. That’s ideology. That’s the right wing,” Frank told TPM. “The other great scam for Ryan is to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to help the rich people… I’m going to lower their rates and get rid of loopholes,’ although he doesn’t mention a single loophole that he’ll get rid of.”

...Frank said the perception of Ryan as a venerable figure has been created by members of the political “commentariat” who “want to say we’re somewhat ‘independent’ of all this [polarization]” in order to appear nonpartisan.

“I agree with [Paul] Krugman’s analysis. There is this instinct to be in the middle. People don’t like to think of themselves as some way partisan. There are people who take comfort from the fact that, ‘Oh, I’ve got people on both sides who disagree with me.’ I think you see this in Tom Friedman. You see this in some others,” he said, also referencing a recent article on Ryan by James Stewart of the New York Times.

“Here’s the deal,” Frank told TPM of some political pundits. “They don’t want to consider themselves to be siding with the Democrats. It’s important for their self-image that they be seen as centrist. The problem is the Republican Party has given them fewer and fewer things that they can identify with, because they’ve moved so far to the right… So they have to find something they can support on the Republican side to maintain this self-image that they’re somehow independent of the parties. And so they pick up the Ryan budget.”

And this is how lame the DCCC is: they didn't even include their own billboard against Ryan in WI-1 in their own write-up about the "Millionaires over Medicare" campaign! This fits right in with Steve Israel telling wealthy Democratic donors to not give any money to Rob Zerban. If you have to ask which side Steve Israel is on... you're not paying close enough attention. But there are dedicated progressives inside the DCCC trying to persuade Israel and his posse to embrace Rob Zerban's campaign. It's going to happen eventually; I feel sure of it... despite this:


Steve Israel and his cronies are going to be a lot more comfortable with this ugly scenario than any normal people will. Let's not let them saddle us with it. Help us end Paul Ryan's political career for real, right here