Thread: Mitt Romney's VP Pick: PAUL RYAN

I think he's a good VP pick.

-dale

If it is Ryan it gives someting to the TP crowd & a chunk of the base - in some ways an attempt to do for Romney what Palin was supposed to do for McCain. It also provides an intelligent & articulate advocate for his positions - in that respect he is pretty much the anti-Palin. I suspect he will wipe the floor with Biden if there is a debate. On the downside, Ryan's preparedness to advocate strongly for what he believes - and in detail - gives the Dems plenty of targets & plenty of ammunition for a scare campaign. As a 'conviction politician' Ryan can't do the Romney trick of simply pretending he now doesn't believe in a bunch of stuff he's advocated - if he does he has no value. That means it may be possible to get him to say some things that some undecided voters may not like or at the very least make it look like he & Romney are at odds.

All sorts of possibilities here. Ryan is certainly a 'circuit breaker' of sorts for Romney, but as with Palin there is no guarantee it will work. Ryan is far more likely to be a plus for Romney than Palin was for McCain....but my pet cat would have been a better pick than Palin, so the bar is pretty low. Will certainly make the campiagn more interesting.

BF,

yup, i agree.

it's actually pretty good for the GOP, i'd say; if obama beats romney in the fall, republicans won't be able to tell themselves (with any truth, anyway) that they lost because they tried to go moderate with romney.

either way, at least the man is intelligent, even if i deeply disagree with his vision. no palin he.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

but my pet cat would have been a better pick than Palin

So tempting ... cannot resist ... cannot hold back ... She's a pussy.

Originally Posted by astralis

BF,

yup, i agree.

it's actually pretty good for the GOP, i'd say; if obama beats romney in the fall, republicans won't be able to tell themselves (with any truth, anyway) that they lost because they tried to go moderate with romney.

either way, at least the man is intelligent, even if i deeply disagree with his vision. no palin he.

A big plus and a big negative.

The big plus is that he will for the time being, ally the Tea Party towards Romney. They were very lukewarm towards Romney and now with Paul Ryan in Romney's camp, Romney can count on bigger money to roll in.

The Negative side is that Paul Ryan will actually galvanize the democrats and blue collar base and start supporting Obama more. It also puts Florida in play because the retirees are very concerned about their benefits and Paul Ryan's budget plan didn't exactly ease their doubts or worries.

It does mean one thing - Obama is going to have to campaign like hell never before. This is going to be the most closely and highly fought race we have seen in a long time and it is going to be the nastiest mud slinging fight. All knives are unsheathed now. Romney has a huge advantage right now. He got a warchest brimming to the overflow and there will be very nasty ads.

The Romney tax thing will only be good for a couple weeks and Obama has to find other arrows in its already diminishing quiver. The corporations and people with money and influence are purposedfully withholding capital funds or stalling plans to hire as not to give Obama any edge. To have any chance of winning, Obama needs to get the unemployment rate down to 7.5% or below. For that to happen, he has to hope that the the small businesses, mom & pop stores & businesses can pick up the slack but there's too little time for that to happen. That is why Obama has been attacking and hammering right now but the danger is that he may have done too early but he may not have had a choice since he needed to preserve his lead coming into the Republican convention. After the convention ends, all hell is gonna break lose.

Originally Posted by dmwnc1959

Multiple news outlets have had breaking news stories since midnight that Paul Ryan is going to be Mitt Romney's VP pick during his announcement later this morning.

Any Pros and Cons for Paul Ryan being nominated? Will it help or hurt Independent voters in their decisions? Any other thoughts appreciated.

Registered righties and lefties will vote their own no matter what so no affect there. Independents/moderates don't like swinging too far to one extreme so advantage Obama. With Ryan's nomination it kind of looks like Romney has already capitulated to the far right and he isn't in office yet. The sad thing is that Romney is playing like Ryan was his decision. It may have been but I would bet the farm that Ryan was on a very short list that was handed to Romney to choose from. The price to get support from the far right and I bet that deal was worked out a few months ago.

Right now it isn't a matter of finding a knockout punch but it is a matter of what can go wrong to lose the election. Both sides are full of crap and are chomping at the bit to get in front of a camera. The thing is... every time Romney or Obama does so they become even LESS appealing to the independents/moderates.

frum weighs in.
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Romney did Obama a huge favor - CNN.com

Romney did Obama a huge favor
By David Frum, CNN Contributor
updated 11:30 AM EDT, Mon August 13, 2012

Washington (CNN) -- In a classic "Saturday Night Live" sketch, Christopher Walken plays a music producer with just one message for his bands: "More cowbell! I gotta have more cowbell!"

Sometimes you wonder if Walken is producing this year's election, too. In Mitt Romney, the GOP has nominated its least ideological candidate since Richard Nixon. At every turn, the party has demanded, "More ideology! I gotta have more ideology!" With the selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has now acceded to that wish. The least ideological Republican candidate since 1968 has committed himself to the most ideological Republican program since 1964.

Democrats must be stunned.

The first battle in every election is the battle to decide what the election is about. What's the question voters must answer?

In 1992, for example, Republicans wanted the election to be about George H.W. Bush's steady leadership in a dangerous world: the end of the Cold War and victory in the Persian Gulf. Democrats countered, "It's the economy, stupid!"

This year, an incumbent even more embattled than George H.W. Bush has his own preferred election theme. He doesn't want to debate his own record, which is pretty dismal. He wants to debate the record of the congressional Republicans elected in 2010, a bunch radically less popular even than the president himself.

You'd imagine that Romney's job was to refuse the Democratic invitation, to choose his own ground for the election, and to keep his distance from the congressional GOP. You'd imagine, but you'd be wrong.

Romney has instead chosen to bolt himself to the House Republicans. He has chosen as his running mate Paul Ryan, the House Republican leader -- not their formal leader, but their intellectual leader, the person who set their agenda. He has effectively adopted Paul Ryan's agenda as his own: big immediate cuts in spending, a dramatic cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% and a bold reform of Medicare for those 55 and under.

Obama's message in 2012: "Forget the economy. It's Medicare, stupid!"

The Romney-Ryan response? "We agree. Medicare it is."

The Romney-Ryan team will tell you that fixing Medicare is crucial to their plans for economic growth. By assuring markets that Medicare costs will grow more slowly after 2023, a Medicare fix -- it's argued -- will ignite job creation in 2013. In the meantime, federal spending cuts and upper-income tax cuts will restore business confidence.

Will voters accept this argument? Possibly, although relatively few economists will do so.

Most economists would draw a distinction between the government's fiscal problems over the medium term and the economy's problems in the near term. The economy's near-term problems can be traced to the housing crisis.

Americans assumed crushing levels of debt in the 2000s to buy expensive homes, homes they assumed would continue to rise in price forever. In 2007, household debt relative to income peaked at the highest level since 1928. (Uh oh.) When the housing market crashed, consumers were stranded with unsustainable debts, and until those debts are reduced, consumers will drastically cut back their spending. As consumers cut back, businesses lose revenue. As businesses lose revenue, they fire employees. As employees lose their jobs, their purchasing power is reduced. As purchasing power is lost throughout the economy, housing prices tumble again.

Rinse and repeat.

Since 2008, the debt burden on households has declined somewhat, partly because of increased saving, mostly because of mortgage default. But household debts have declined nowhere near enough, and the pace of household debt reduction is slowing.

The result: slow recovery of the private economy, weak consumer demand, paltry job growth -- considerably offset by continuing job shrinkage in the public sector.

Paul Ryan's various plans and road maps contain many interesting elements for the reduction of government in the decades ahead. They do not respond to the most immediate and urgent problem: prolonged mass unemployment caused by heavy household debt.

Why not? There's why the ideology makes itself felt. Conservatives ardently believe that big future deficits are the cause of today's unemployment. They feel it. They know it. And they don't want to hear different.

When naysayers worry that the Romney campaign has over-indulged the ideology, the answer quickly comes: "Well, Reagan was ideological in 1980 -- and he still won. Why can't Romney do the same, especially since the economy is even worse now than it was then?"

Fair answer. Here's the difference: Although Ronald Reagan was a highly ideological candidate, he did not run a highly ideological campaign. Quite the contrary! Precisely because party conservatives trusted Reagan's ideological commitment, they allowed him space to move to the center.

Seeking the GOP nomination in 1976, Reagan had pledged large immediate cuts in federal spending ($90 billion, at a time when that was a lot of money). In 1980, Reagan emphasized an easier-to-swallow message of tax cuts, not spending cuts -- and indeed promised that he'd protect the Medicare program he'd opposed when it was created in the mid-1960s.

No such leeway for Mitt Romney. He has been constrained first to endorse Paul Ryan's budget plan (which he did in December 2011 after months of attempted evasion), to endorse a cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% (March 2012), and now finally to choose Ryan himself as his running mate. No leeway -- and now no exit.

Conservatives exult that the GOP will now offer the country "a choice, not a referendum." That phrase does not make a lot of sense. (What is more of a choice than a referendum?) But there's good reason why conservatives say it. They are looking for a rephrasing of the slogan uppermost in their minds: "a choice not an echo" -- the title of the best-selling manifesto that helped persuade Republicans to follow Barry Goldwater to disaster.

Originally Posted by astralis

frum weighs in.
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Romney did Obama a huge favor - CNN.com

Romney did Obama a huge favor
By David Frum, CNN Contributor
updated 11:30 AM EDT, Mon August 13, 2012
.....

Let me summarizer the above Astralis.

Krum: Heavens the Republicans are offering a real choice on real issues. What fools! Me and the economists I like don't agree with this plan, so it cannot possibly work (fuzzy stream of conscious "logic" on liner offered in justification). Ronald Reagan offered a solution for his time, but Romney now must offer a different one. Woe be onto him.

If there is one thing these columns and analysis illustrate, it is that talk is cheap.

One thing that is clear, with this nomination, is that this fight is now wide open, and both the left and right now have more to lose and to gain. It took guts for Romney to do this, something he has not shown much of in this campaign up until now.

On a personal note, at the end of the day, I'd rather have someone willing to confront the real problems, rather than someone who passes the buck to the next generation. Presidential platforms rarely survive first contact with reality. The most important thing our newly elected presidents do is set the agenda and the tone. If Romney and Ryan are willing to put our long term fiscal problems front and center, if they are willing to embark on substantive reform, then I support them.

citanon,

The most important thing our newly elected presidents do is set the agenda and the tone. If Romney and Ryan are willing to put our long term fiscal problems front and center, if they are willing to embark on substantive reform, then I support them.

then you read the economic proposals both Romney and Ryan have put out, and wake up... but i digress.

frankly, though, if romney HAD wanted to just stick with a 'i am a businessman who fixes things' shtick to appeal to independents, i think he would have done better with portman.

that he picked paul seems to show that he figures he needs to shore up his conservative base further.

a move done out of political weakness, i'd say.

Still not gonna vote for Romney.

The good thing about living in Kommieland is my vote doesn't count. I can vote my conscience.

Originally Posted by astralis

citanon,
then you read the economic proposals both Romney and Ryan have put out, and wake up... but i digress.

I don't really care about the details of his proposal frankly. :P

I want him to do something small that open the doorway in thinking and politics for more and more things to be talked about and done until we get it right. I believe that opening move should be to the right. I believe we need people to keep their eyes and their energy focused on the right things. That means Romney-Ryan to me.

frankly, though, if romney HAD wanted to just stick with a 'i am a businessman who fixes things' shtick to appeal to independents, i think he would have done better with portman.

that he picked paul seems to show that he figures he needs to shore up his conservative base further.

a move done out of political weakness, i'd say.

Necessity != weakness. The electorate is looking for big ideas to fix our perceived malaise, and that's really what the next president have to offer. Maybe the Democrats don't feel the political necessity to do it, but that's not the same as what the country needs.

I usually agree with Frum's assessments, but I think he is hopelessly wrong this time.

I think Paul Ryan is a great VP candidate choice for the GOP and is possibly much more interesting than the actual candidate. However, he would now have to do the hand-waving to explain Romney's magic formula of solving the debt crisis by reducing taxes for everyone and also how to guarantee universal healthcare by removing the individual mandate.

Just heard on radio today:

Paul Ryan doesn't have an apartment in DC. He sleeps on a cot in his office when he's in DC.

Paul Ryan does the P90x workout.

Paul Ryan is a bow hunter.

And us Canadians have absolutely no say on who gets to scew us up the backside.