Breaking news late US Mountain time on Friday 8/10/12 indicates that Mitt Romney will name Paul Ryan, representative from Wisconsin, author of the so-called 'Ryan budget,' and Ayn Rand radical, as his VP pick.
A desperation move given the recent polls - Romney has 'lost the summer.' The Obama campaign, and progressives, should be ecstatic. I would start by framing the Ryan budget as a European-style austerity budget for America which will further eviscerate the lower and middle class social safety net by transferring risk to the less fortunate among us, and point out that the current European unemployment rate is 11.3% and rising under Ryan-style budgets.
Just saying.
Update: Here is an L.A. Times link detailing Ryan's Ayn Randian infatuation. Another inconvenient truth like Romney's taxes and Bain labor minimizing facts that the Romney campaign would sooner forget; I doubt Axelrod and OFA will let them do so.
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This is really a strange move. It suggests that Romney thinks his best path to the White House is through disparate voter turnout: Ryan, like Palin, will excite the far-right base. And perhaps a lot of Obama voters will stay home. But it seems risky to me: the more exposure Ryan and his "budget" get, the less the general public will like them. I, for one, feel more motivated to vote against Romney/Ryan than I did to vote against Romney.
ReplyDeleteExactly. I used the word 'desperate' advisedly because this shows the Obama campaign has forced Romney to move even further to the right with this selection. So Romney is afraid of losing his base and had to do this, just like McCain in 2008.
DeleteThe instinct of a campaign at this point would be to tack to the center to pick up the undecided independents, but Obama has forced Romney to tack away, and that is extremely bad news for Romney.
Yep Ryan is radical, but he is not as unprepared or inarticulate as Palin, and he doesn't necessarily believe the stuff he says. Nate Silver has a great post on Romney's decision http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/?hp
ReplyDeleteNate Silver appears to be doing at least as brilliant a job modelling this election as he did in 2008, and Matias' link is a very nice analysis. This site tickles my metrics fancy. Not bad for an A.B. Chicago Econ grad (not in any way a program endorsement, just a comment). A highly recommended site.
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