Nothing ages as fast as a defeated presidential ticket (pace McCain/Palin), but the expiration date on this year’s losers has arrived faster than usual.
As Barack Obama starts to shuffle a second-term Cabinet, Paul Ryan emerges from the GOP rubble to blame turnout in “urban areas” for the defeat rather than his ideas on the Budget and Medicare.
“When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in,” he tells a Wisconsin interviewer, “and…coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.”
Duh. Like much of the media and many pollsters, the Republicans’ dynamic duo was concentrating on the white tip of an electoral iceberg rather than the massive, less visible bulk beneath.
One of the party’s future hopefuls less visible during the debacle, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, is urging Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and become more inclusive:
“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything…”
MORE.