Paul Ryan’s Democratic Fan Club

By Jonathan Alter 

If Barack Obama’s campaign officials were happy over the weekend about Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, they’re ecstatic now.
The Obama camp is guarding against overconfidence and still betting the U.S. presidential race will be close. But aides traveling with Obama pointed with glee to headlines from Florida, Iowa and elsewhere that lash the Republican ticket to Ryan’s plan for deep cuts in Medicare, the nation’s most popular social program after Social Security.

Paul Ryan’s Catholic Problem

by Deal W. Hudson 

His budget plan has drawn fire from some Catholic bishops for cutting programs that help the poor. Conservative leader Deal W. Hudson on what the GOP ticket needs to do.

With the choice of Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate, the 2012 presidential election will be the first in U.S. history with a Roman Catholic on both sides of the ballot. The contrast between the Catholicism of Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Ryan perfectly represents the ongoing debate about the Catholic vote going back to the Reagan years. 

Mitt Romney, left, listens as vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan speaks at a rally Aug. 11, 2012 in Ashland, Virginia. (Mary Altaffer / AP Photo)

Indeed, the choice between these two types of Catholic politicians could not be any more plain.

Biden is a “social justice” Catholic who claims to know how to connect with blue-collar Democratic Catholics, like those in his hometown of Scranton, Pa. During four of his last five years in the Senate, he received a 100 percent rating from NARAL. As vice president he supported federal funding for abortion, despite voicing opposition to it in 2008, and the Health and Human Services mandate requiring Catholic institutions serving the public to provide insurance coverage for contraception, including abortifacients and sterilization.

Paul Ryan’s Wife Janna’s Resume, Life Before Politics & Family History

by Eleanor Clift 

She may be a new to the national political scene, but Janna Ryan already seems comfortable with the spotlight. Eleanor Clift on the potential second lady’s high-powered first career, family politics, and down-home image.

For a newcomer to the national stage, Janna Christine Little Ryan comes across as remarkably poised and confident, with a winning smile and a fashionably windswept look—in short, what’s known in the business as a natural.

And no wonder; politics were in her DNA long before she met and married Rep. Paul Ryan, at the time in his first term in Congress and considered one of the Capitol’s most eligible bachelors.

For a newcomer to the national stage, Janna Ryan, the wife of vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, (at right) comes across as remarkably poised and confident—in short, a natural. (Saul Loeb, AFP / Getty Images)

They dated for a year until they were wed in 2000. Janna Little had been comfortably settled into a career track as a high-powered attorney and lobbyist for Price Waterhouse Coopers in Arlington, Va. A graduate of the prestigious women’s college Wellesley, she had a résumé reflecting the leadership skills instilled by her education and in her upbringing as the eldest of three daughters whose mother had blazed the path both to Wellesley and law school.