They all do it

TPM  on the latest of what passes for humor among certain of the conservative chatterati and their pet candidates:

Prompter jokes have been an old standby among conservatives for most of the Obama’s time in office, reaching a fever pitch in early 2010 when a viral photograph of Obama using a set of teleprompters for a policy speech he gave at a school was taken out of context to suggest Obama needs a script to speak coherently. 

The joke rolled on through the years after getting a boisterous renaissance during the Republican presidential primaries, when most of the candidates mocked Obama for using prompters. As cataloged by National Journal, Rick Santorum called Obama “the reader-in-chief,” and Newt Gingrich often used a quip about Obama’s prompters while challenging him to his famous series of Lincoln-Douglass-style debates. 

The fun came to an end when Romney emerged as the presumptive nominee. Not only does Romney employ prompters often himself, he actually defended Obama’s use of them in off-camera footage given to Gawker by the short-lived Fox News mole. 

“It does make some sense,” Romney told Fox’s Sean Hannity in the footage. “It keeps you from saying something you don’t mean, you get the message out.”

The value of the prompter was on full display last weekend when Ryan emerged from the USS Wisconsin battleship in Norfolk, Va., to stand with Romney for the first time. Perhaps unfamiliar with the stump speech he was debuting, Ryan appeared to follow Romney’s lead and use a prompter (as well as notes) to give his remarks.

    

     The teleprompter meme is popular among SCGOP bloggers. Here's another compilation.

     As it happens, the device is popular among Republican rpesidents and candidates, too.

     Watching the Ryan announcement, I noted both of them used the Spawn of Satan, but it wasn't enough to keep Romney from announcing his running mate as the next President.