WATCH: Paul Ryan’s Brother Calls Him a “Career Politician”

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has railed against the Washington political class and pitched his outsider status as a selling point. Romney hit on this theme in May when he said that “someone who’s never spent a day in the private sector, like President Obama, simply doesn’t understand” the economy and how jobs are created. Romney’s in line with much of the tea-partyized GOP, which hails a lack of experience in Washington as a virtue.

Yet Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president, has worked in Washington nearly all of his adult life. He did stints at a conservative think tank and as a staffer for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). He first ran for Congress at the tender age of 28.

In fact, Ryan is such a Washington insider that his own brother, Tobin, describes him as a “career politician.” And Tobin Ryan doesn’t mean that as a compliment.

Here’s Tobin Ryan calling his brother a “career politician” on Fox News Wednesday morning at the GOP convention site in Tampa, Florida, in a video clip that has received little notice:

Transcript:

Megyn Kelly: Let’s get to know him. He’s from Wisconsin. He’s married. How many kids?

Tobin Ryan: He has three kids.

Kelly: How old are they?

Ryan: They are 10, 8, and 7.

Kelly: Lifelong politician? I mean, 28 years old, he runs for Congress, been there 14 years.

Ryan: You know, it sounds like that. I never actually thought he was going to be a career politician. And I kept expecting him to come back and start a real job.

So Ryan’s brother sees him as a Washington guy who hasn’t held a “real job.” But don’t expect this to stop the Republicans from denigrating Obama and other foes as career politicians. It’s too good a talking point to subject to the test of reality.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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