WaPo's Ruth Marcus: Paul Ryan Is 'Sarah Palin With Substance and a Paper Trail'

With all the trashing of Paul Ryan by Obama-loving media members in the past 24 hours, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus pulled off quite a feat on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

In just one sentence, she insulted Ryan as well as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NANCY CORDES, SUBSTITUTE HOST: So then Ruth, I'll ask you, given everything you just heard from John, does that mean that Mitt Romney made the right pick?

RUTH MARCUS, WASHINGTON POST: I don't think so, with all due respect. I love the idea of an ideas-driven campaign, but this seems to me to be extremely risky. And I'm going to go out on a limb: it feels like it could be Sarah Palin with substance and a paper trail.

Now, one could make the case that this was more of a cheap shot at Palin, but as Marcus like most of her colleagues despises the former Alaska governor, that's hardly the case.

If Ryan is what Marcus reviles "with substance and a paper trail," she clearly has no respect for him either:

CORDES: What do you mean by that?

MARCUS: What I mean, is, look, vice presidential nominees are important to the extent that they tell us something about the presidential nominee. What this tells us about the presidential nominee is that he has decided - and there have been lots of questions about what does Mitt Romney really believe - he now has told us that he really believes in Paul Ryan’s vision of America, and Paul Ryan’s budget.

I thought it was very interesting that Eric Fehrnstrom in your interview didn't exactly answer the question of "Does this mean he accepts every jot and tittle of the Ryan budget, and all the other things that Paul Ryan has suggested all along the way?” So I think what we're going to see over the next few weeks is just a continuing series of well, does he think this? Does he want to have private accounts for social security? Does he want to cut domestic spending quite this dramatically? That's a different campaign than we've been running, and I think a pretty risky campaign.

So, the candidates talking about substantive issues such as social security reform and cutting spending is "pretty risky."

Would Marcus rather Obama, Romney, Biden, and Ryan talk about the former Massachusetts governor's tax returns and Bain Capital for the next three months? Are those subjects of great importance to voters?

The reality is that picking Ryan ensures that we're going to spend the rest of this campaign discussing what's really important to the American people while getting away from all the extraneous nonsense Obama and his media minions have been raising since the beginning of the year.

And that's precisely what folks such as Marcus and all the rest that have been trashing Ryan are worried about.