NOBODY FEARS US

How weakened and neutered is liberalism right now? So much so that this is seen as perfectly reasonable, rather than an absurdity:

Ryan will decide soon on Wisconsin Senate race

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Sunday he'll decide this week if he'll run for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Herb Kohl.

"Herb just announced this Friday," Ryan said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It was a bit of a surprise to all of us. So, my family and voters are just started digesting this. I plan on making an announcement very quickly."

Hunh? Weren't we told that the Paul Ryan budget, with its evisceration of Medicare, was the biggest blunder by D.C. Republicans in years? Didn't we hear that this has knocked Republicans back on their heels, as they scramble to distance themselves from the fatal miscalculation of deciding to hold a vote on it? Well, if all that is true, shouldn't Paul Ryan announcing a Senate candidacy be a little bit like the chief planner of the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in the Carter presidency deciding to go home and run for Senate, with that failure as his top resume item?

It just shouldn't be possible for Paul Ryan to run for another office without being laughed out of the room. He should be humiliated. Instead, not only is he considering a Senate race, but a lot of Republican party elders wish he would run for president.

As a liberal, I feel utterly marginalized by this. Similarly, I feel marginalized by the fact that the GOP's other Great White Presidential Hope, Mitch Daniels, was actually boasting about having the support of Governor Scott Walker, the other Wisconsinite who (according to the left) has alienated and outraged the masses. Reports of a Walker endorsement of Daniels were eventually corrected -- but still, why isn't Scott Walker toxic? Why isn't his endorsement radioactive? Why does Daniels -- one of the few Republicans who's actually trying to look past the GOP primaries and figure out a way to win enough swing voters to be elected president -- not want to run from Scott Walker as fast as humanly possible?

It's because nobody cares what we liberals think, regardless of how many protesters there were in Madison a while back. And no one's really all that afraid of the few liberal protesters who turned up recently at congressional town halls to denounce Ryanomics.

I don't know what it would take to turn these people into real pariahs, but we're not there yet. We're not even close.