Can't You Go Home Again?

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate+Aug 14, 2012+ EditorialCartoonists.com

It's a small point, perhaps, but it just struck me as strange that the media all persistently referred to the Romney-Ryan Rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, as a "homecoming" rally for the freshly presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, Paul Ryan.

The New York media could be excused for overlooking the fact that Mr. Ryan hails from Janesville, Wisconsin, and that Waukesha is not even in his congressional district. Yet even the Milwaukee media happily repeated that this was a "homecoming." That is, after all, what the Romney campaign officially called it.

But whereas working-class Janesville might have enjoyed a moment in the national spotlight, Waukesha is as dyed-in-the-wool Republican a suburb as you could hope to find anywhere in the nation. TV cameras were treated to an overflow crowd of overjoyed Waukeshans enthused at the prospect of replacing the Great Society with the Galt Society. And, as James Rowen pointed out, "Janesville's signature but shuttered GM and Parker Pen assembly plants don't exactly offer TV crews the kind of news-at-10 'B-roll' footage that the candidates' handlers are looking for."