Smartest Commentary I've seen on Ryan

Someone named Keith Koffler gets it.

There’s been an almost Pavlovian reaction among President Barack Obama’s supporters in responding to Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Obama’s spin doctors are salivating at the chance to dissect the Wisconsin Republican’s conservative record and politically disembowel him with it. But they don’t understand that Ryan’s conservatism is not going to hurt him anymore than Ronald Reagan’s did in 1980. Bearing, like Reagan, a specific plan of action for difficult times, Ryan may be just the man to ride his conservatism straight into the West Wing.

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 Ryan lacks the lifetime of experience Reagan brought to his politics, his thinking and his persona. But the House Budget Committee chairman does have a grasp of detail and numbers that Reagan could not match.

Ryan also exudes the Midwestern sunniness Reagan could project, while harboring the same capacity to respond sharply when challenged.

But most like Reagan, Ryan stands implacably for something — something that, as with Reagan in 1980, is an alternative to the dismal state of affairs the country finds itself.

Reagan’s victory in the 1980 Republican primary initially lit up the pleasure regions of the brains of Jimmy Carter’s political operatives

But the Carter camp, like those working for Obama today, didn’t understand conservative ideas’ power to rouse the public to the Republican ticket. Because they hate these ideas so much, they can’t fathom that so many people could embrace them.

And the power of the Reagan and now the Romney/Ryan platforms is far more than their conservatism or their clarity. It is the suggestion that there is light at the end of the tunnel — and a map to get there.

Obama’s goals are opaque.

His campaign slogan is “Forward.” But forward to what? The president has offered no clear plan to deal with the greatest peril to the nation’s fiscal health: spending on entitlements. His campaign relishes the prospect of assailing Ryan instead of offering an alternative that the Republicans might attack.

But the earnest Ryan, like the avuncular Reagan, will be hard to demonize. He’ll also get credit for trying to solve the problem.

This guy gets it.  Obama can't vote present after the destruction he's unleashed.  He's offered no plan to address the looming disaster.  He's got nothing other than to defame and demonize.  Telling black voters that Romney intends to put them back in chains is unlikely to be the winning strategy.