Following Joe Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, Wisconsin businessman Paul Nehlen reminded his Twitter followers of Paul Ryan’s widely-ridiculed 2012 Vice Presidential debate performance against Biden.
Nehlen, who is running to unseat Ryan in his August 9th primary election, mocked Ryan for being “emasculate[d]” by Biden on a national stage, and for thirstily slurping down pitchers of water while appearing to suffer from nerve-induced dry mouth.
“Speaking of Joe Biden, let’s not forget how thirsty Paul Ryan is… for amnesty,” Nehlen tweeted along with a gif of Ryan gulping down water.
Nehlen also tweeted a link to a Saturday Night Live segment mocking Ryan’s performance, as well as an article from The Guardian, which wrote at the time: “Joe Biden’s alpha-male display leaves Paul Ryan overwhelmed in VP debate… On more than one occasion, the Republican candidate visibly gulped.”
In 2015, conservative commentator and best selling author Ann Coulter suggested that Ryan’s visible performance anxiety throughout the 2012 debate should disqualify him from running for Speaker of the House. “If you’re losing a debate to Joe Biden, maybe you are not [the Republican Party’s] best spokesman,” Coulter said.
Indeed, Ryan’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden certainly did not help Mitt Romney’s campaign against President Obama.
After Ryan failed to deliver, what many described as a “gimme election” against President Obama, the Republican Party issued what became known as the GOP’s post-election autopsy report, which argued that Republicans should embrace amnesty for illegal immigrants.
The report concluded that the reason Ryan and Romney lost was because of they were unable to make inroads with Hispanics.
Even though this analysis has been repeatedly debunked–as Byron York has explained Romney’s “most serious” problem was that he was “not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP”– Ryan, nevertheless, along with fellow “Young Gun” Eric Cantor led the charge to push amnesty and expand immigration levels.
One year after helping to lose the 2012 election for his party, Ryan joined open borders advocate Luis Gutierrez to stump for Obama’s amnesty agenda.
Luis Gutierrez, who has said that his “only one loyalty” is to theimmigrant community, endorsed Paul Ryan for Speaker of the House last year and has called Ryan his “guiding light” on immigration.
During the height of the Rubio-Obama amnesty push, Paul Ryan suggested that the U.S. needed more foreign labor because there are jobs– such as working in hotels– that Wisconsin workers simply won’t do.
“It’s the dairy farmer in western Wisconsin who needs labor. It’s the manufacturer. It’s the hospitality industry in the Wisconsin Dells in the summer season—the nursery growers. There are pockets in the sector of this slow economy that really need work and labor,” Ryan said.
As Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has explained, “There is nobody around in the party who is more fanatically dedicated to the cause of open borders than Paul Ryan. Whereas most others could be talked off the ledge on this issue, Ryan is a true believer.”