With Mitt Romney's surprise announcement of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate (on the closing weekend of the London Olympics, no less! The guy can't stop stepping on British toes, can he?), the pundits are chiming in on whether the pick will help or hurt him in his bid for the White House. The reality? It hardly matters.

Romney was painted into a corner by his base, who demanded he buffer his conservative creds with an ideologically correct running mate. The most buzzed about veep candidates — Ryan, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and others — were being publicly "vetted" primarily in order to test them as contenders for the top of the ticket in 2016, regardless of whether they'd help the flailing Romney campaign. (A possible Freudian slip acknowledging that reality? In unveiling his pick, Romney accidentally introduced Ryan as "the next president of the United States.")

Here at Meme Patrol, however, we're more interested in the fact that Ryan, with his porcelain-pale skin, deep-set eyes and a pronounced widow's peak, has long been snarked as an "Eddie Munster lookalike." Paired with Romney's long-faced, patrician features, the instant invention of a new meme — Herman and Eddie Munster in 2012! — was inevitable. 

And look: Karoli, over at the Crooks & Liars blog, has already unleashed the digital hounds.

Attention, 'Shoppers! Time to get your cut, paste, blend and blur on. Here's Meme Patrol's take: A full GOP 2012 family portrait.