++Willard Romney started the introduction of his Vice Presidential choice this morning by saying,"Here's the next President of the United States" and then he put his arm around Paul Ryan and said,"I've been known to make mistakes in my life."
++In a recent New Yorker, Paul Ryan said that he was the future of the Republican Party.
++The Obama campaign was fast off the mark with fund-raising e-mails and statements about Ryan embrace of getting rid of Medicare as we know it, backing debt exploding measures during the Bush Administration and his own radical budget plan that has passed the House.
++Strangely, the Romney camp said that picking Paul Ryan was not an endorsement of the Paul Ryan Plan even though Romney previously did back the plan. Now the Romney camp claims Romney will propose his own plan.
++The Ryan nomination marks the second time Bill Kristol has successfully proposed a Republican vice presidential candidate. The first was Sarah Palin. He has become the Dick Morris of political kingmaking.
++The Romney people said that their candidate didn't go for Ohio or the Hispanic vote but wanted someone with a vision of America. Well, he certainly got that with a devotee of Ayn Rand.
++The optics of this morning's announcement was interesting. Mitt Romney looked noticeably older against the young Paul Ryan. It brought up images of George H.W. Bush with Dan Quayle. Paul Ryan is a notoriously boring speaker and the both combined could be a Sominex commercial. It's like Bob Dole choosing Jack Kemp but in Jack's earlier version of a firebrand.
++Early op-ed pieces made the interesting point that this is one of the most inexperienced tickets in modern memory. Neither has any foreign policy or national security experience and Paul Ryan has more political experience than Mitt Romney. Going against his maxim that any politician should have three years in the private sector, Romney chose a Washington insider.
++The Democrats have a very strange problem right now. Ryan's Budget Plan polls so poorly that voters literally do not believe any politician would ever propose such lunacy. So running against the details of the plan create credibility problems for Democratic challengers. It is basically the dismantling of the remains of the modern American social welfare state with the creation of a voucher system for Medicare and the privatizing of Social Security. Democrats would be wise to raise the question whether this ticket wants to preserve the FDIC guarantees Roosevelt put in place to insure bank deposits. Even Herbert Hoover never stooped this far.
++The Ryan pick is a bonanza for Paul Krugman, who will produce copious copy from here on out about Ryan as a "Serious Person". Krugman has been devastating about this in the past and will just go to town now so make sure you follow him.
++I put the blame for this on Rachel Maddow. Several years ago, Rachel Maddow did a cute show on the GOP's Young Guns and showed Paul Ryan in his photo as beefcake but she never went after Ryan's ideas at the time and could have cut this off at the past. Ryan's ideas were known at the time and I wrote about them several years ago on this blog. His vision was the United States as a big aircraft carrier and his "debt" solution was running massive deficits for over 40 years until America was totally broke. All discretionary spending would vanish and the cost of Medicare would be placed on the elderly at numbers starting at $6,500-$8,000. It was a vision of the complete and total privatization of America where all income is transferred upwards.
++The Romney people said that both men love data, which may explain how inhuman they seem. But Ezra Klein says that Biden needs to really prepare for his debate because Paul Ryan is glib and sharp in debate.
++But as a personality there are many downsides. Paul Ryan in recent years has taken to holding closed town hall meetings because he can't deal with criticism from his own constituents. He has adopted a strategy of controlled media access, which will not serve him well in a national campaign. Ryan is only good with an audience of admirers. The other issue is that this is a person who has only run a congressional campaign and has not been exposed to running even a state-wide campaign, so his idea about what constitutes the country is severely limited.
++The Ryan pick also screws up the Romney attacks on President Obama as waging a war against religion. In recent days, the Romney campaign has come under attack from the Franciscans, the Catholic nuns and the Jesuits. The Catholic church has produced videos to show to congregations basically urging worshippers to vote against Obama on the issue of Right to Life. But now with Paul Ryan, the Catholic Bishops might want to lay low. They attacked the Ryan Plan as "amoral" for its attack on the poor and needy. So it will be an interesting dilemma for the Christian contingent. Paul Ryan has now thrown Ayn Rand overboard, his intellectual idol,and said his hero now is Thomas Aquinas.
++While Washington pundits treat Ryan as a "Serious Person", the more the average American sees him they will get a sense of his inexperience and his youthfulness and his radical ideas. I don't believe this will wear well.
++This is the first presidential choice Mitt Romney has made. What does it really say about him? First, that he caved to pressure from the right-wing to pacify them. Second, he abandoned his strategy of a referendum against Obama for opting for an election of choice. Third,he does not care whatsoever about foreign policy and national security except to increase military spending. Fourth,he handles situations like a CEO and not as a political leader. It doesn't show any principles or a desire to complement himself with some one who has other abilities. And the pick is supposed to be of someone capable on Day One of being President. On this the choice failed.
++In the immediate future, I expect that Romney's choice will net him a couple of points in the polls but I think any effect of Paul Ryan on the ticket will quickly dissipate. Romney will still have the problems in the Swing States and even Ryan doesn't insure Wisconsin. In fact the GOP plans to have Governor Scott Walker speak on Ryan's behalf at the convention.
++Democrats face a problem in making sure that Ryan's ideas do not come across as fresh and appealing. They are so extreme that people can be confused into thinking they are real ideas and might work when all the number crunchers can show you what an immediate disaster they would be.
++If the choice of Ryan energizes the Republican base, then it surely has energized the Democrats who can see a primal threat to their basic accomplishments over the years. I would expect that in the near term you might even see a surge in contributions for Democratic candidates.
++Romney today firmly put himself on the side of the Tea Party and no longer can tack to the middle,especially when Ryan is running with him. In an interesting way, Romney's choice was bold in that he jeopardized his only core constituency--whites above the age of 60, who favor him. With Ryan,the older generation have to be scared to death. And in at least one state--Florida, Romney didn't do anyone any favors.
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