Paul Ryan in Pennsylvania: "Happy to Be Clinging to My Guns and My Religion"

While campaigning today outside of Pittsburgh, Paul Ryan took a shot today at Barack Obama's 2008 comments regarding Pennsylvanians and small-town Midwesterners who get "bitter" and "cling" to their "guns or religion."

"Hey, I’m a Catholic deer hunter,” Ryan said, according to a video posted at the Washington Examiner. “I am happy to be clinging to my guns and my religion.”

In 2008, Obama told a group of wealthy donors in San Francisco: 

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Jamelle Bouie, a liberal blogger at the Washington Post, observes that Obama has "emerged as the most vocal culture warrior of the election." So far, it's been a one-sided battle, with Obama and his allies in the press attacking Romney on cultural issues, while the Romney campaign has generally chosen not to respond. Are Ryan's comments today a sign that the Romney campaign will start to fight back?