Tag: Paul Ryan

Romney’s Choice of Ryan

I feel like I have read sev­er­al times on lib­er­al blogs that Rom­ney now has to car­ry Ryan’s bag­gage as well as his own. I do not think so.

The Ryan pick does indi­cate that Rom­ney was not com­plete­ly con­fi­dent of enthu­si­as­tic sup­port from his base (which amounts to the Tea Par­ty). Choos­ing Ryan makes the base feel a lot bet­ter about Romney.

To win the gen­er­al, Rom­ney has to move to the cen­ter at least some dis­tance, but with­out a Tea Par­ty approved run­ning mate, he could not afford to do that.

Back to the bag­gage. My mem­o­ry is that when the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date picks a run­ning mate, it is the run­ning mate that must con­form to the can­di­date’s posi­tions. Ryan’s job is to take Rom­ney’s con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage to the base while Rom­ney mod­er­ates him­self for the gen­er­al electorate.

Democ­rats will do every­thing they can to hang Ryan’s pre­vi­ous posi­tions around Rom­ney’s neck. Rom­ney’s long record of being on every which side of every issue will make that a lot eas­i­er. But any­where where Rom­ney’s con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tion dif­fers from Ryan’s, we can expect that Ryan will be talk­ing up Rom­ney’s posi­tion, not his own.

I still believe that in the end, Oba­ma wins with a sol­id margin.

UPDATE: “Well, first of all, Con­gress­man Ryan has joined my cam­paign and his cam­paign is my cam­paign now. And we’re on the exact­ly the same page,” …the page being Rom­ney’s page, not Ryan’s.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/romney-ryan-no-longer-supports-his-plans-medicare-cuts.php?ref=fpb

What Were They Thinking?!?

My nor­mal response to the ques­tion “What was he think­ing?” (or a vari­a­tion there­of) is that there was no think­ing involved. But is it pos­si­ble there was no think­ing involved on the part of the Repub­li­can House mem­bers when they passed the Ryan bud­get? If there was think­ing, what could it be?

All but four of them vot­ed to destroy Medicare, slash lots of spend­ing that peo­ple like, and low­er tax­es on the wealthy! They did this even though there was not a chance in hell of the bud­get becom­ing law. Next year they have to run for reelec­tion while defend­ing this vote. I assume the pri­ma­ry defense will be “There was no way it would become law, so it was safe to vote for it” which, I am sure, will make every­one feel bet­ter about it.

The inter­est­ing thing about the Ryan bud­get is that if it actu­al­ly passed the Sen­ate and the Pres­i­dent signed it, it would make the deficit worse. Why? Because there is no way the “end medicare as we know it” por­tion would remain intact. The spend­ing cuts the bud­get lays out would not remain intact. But you can bet your boots the tax cut for the wealthy would stay.

And the deficit would explode.

The deficit is a seri­ous issue, but it can not be solved by pre­tend­ing that polit­i­cal real­i­ties no longer exist.