Sen. Jim DeMint, a GOP kingmaker, tells National Review Online that he would welcome Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to the upper chamber with open arms.

“I’d love to have him,” DeMint says in a phone interview. “It would be wonderful to have a mind like Paul Ryan’s in the Senate. He would raise the IQ of the place by about ten points.”

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, will announce later this week whether he will run for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Herb Kohl.

“Frankly, I would be surprised if he left his position in the House in order to run,” DeMint cautions. “It is hard to encourage him to leave his post as budget chairman at this time, because I could not think of a brighter person to lead that committee.”

DeMint, like many of his colleagues, sees Ryan as a current and future GOP leader. When he heard Newt Gingrich refer to Ryan’s budget as “radical” over the weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press, he was dismayed.

“I was surprised to hear Newt say that,” DeMint says. “I have a feeling that in retrospect, he will figure out a way to qualify that.”

DeMint, for his part, is “very supportive of what Paul Ryan is suggesting” with regard to the “premium-subsidy model” on Medicare. “It is something that Paul and I actually worked together on in the House,” he notes.