The Stench.

Last month, I wrote:

I don't understand what Ryan's thinking. Willard's chances were slim before he accepted, and when veep candidates lose (Lieberman, Palin, Kemp, Quayle, Ferraro), they are generally mothballed. 

Now Ryan certainly won't get blamed for the loss -- just as Palin wasn't. But he'll have the stink of a loser on him, and I suspect, is going to have a rocky campaign, which will scuff him up a bit.

Yep.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Oops.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”