Romney campaign confirms Paul Ryan as running mate

Chicago Tribune ^ | August 11, 2012 | (al-Reuters)

[combat_boots]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate, the Romney campaign confirmed on Saturday.

"Mitt's choice for VP is Paul Ryan. Spread the word about America's comeback team," a Romney campaign app said, confirming widespread reports he had selected the 42-year-old Wisconsin lawmaker who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee.

[combat_boots]

"America's Comeback Team"

[CitizenM]

My take: Our Country Needs Some R & R. Vote Romney and Ryan to stop government over-spending and get our economy on the Right track.

[jmaroneps37]

But somebody called me late last night to tell me that Paul Ryan stuck his tongue out at another student in the 1st grade! I hope the Obama campaign doesn't hear about this or they'll make another tv spot with him pushing an old lady in a wheelchair over a cliff and this time GULP! he'll stick his tongue out as he does.

[Pollster1]

I’m tired of upside down tickets. 2008 should have been Palin/McCain, and 2012 would be much better as Ryan/Romney (although better still with Romney not even on the ballot). Still, our choices are what they are. If Obama wins, there is less than a 1% chance of America surviving as a free country until 2016. If Romney wins, the destruction will be much slower, and we will probably have a 50-50 chance of reversing the slide after 2016. That’s a huge improvement, and probably the best chance we have left.

[muawiyah]

Our choices ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE.

The illegitimacy of the results of the last primary system are a scandal waiting to be poked with all the pestilential smarm sprayed over the body politic.

[Redleg Duke]

Your whining is so predictable!

I imagine you would criticize Jesus Christ for not being able to swim.

[Redleg Duke]

Your whining is so predictable!

I imagine you would criticize Jesus Christ for not being able to swim.

[Redleg Duke]

Your whining is so predictable!

I imagine you would criticize Jesus Christ for not being able to swim.

[Redleg Duke]

Your whining is so predictable!

I imagine you would criticize Jesus Christ for not being able to swim
,

[vekzen]

Paul Ryan wrote Roadmap for America Futures, a detailed analysis of our fiscal crisis and how to get out of it.

Obama wrote Dreams of My Father — a fabricated ode to his deep seated narcissism.

Stark contrast

[muawiyah]

hmmmmm ~ made you excited or something ~ 4 hits on the same piece of nonsense!

Speaking of Romney and the Mittbots simply doesn't bring to mind Jesus!

[combat_boots]

I will never forget 0bama wanting to speak with Ryan privately after Ryan destroyed him in place with his financial acumen.

A Wisconsin boy, too.

I’d have preferred West or Petraeus, but that’s me.

Having a financial team with creds is actually a pretty good way to go, intellectually speaking.

We need some real SOBs to cut the chains of debt and ridiculous trading practices. We are being looted right and left.

We also need to round up the communists in Congress and send them to a deserted island—together. For the children.

[Tupelo]

Ryan is a nice safe pick for VP. Romney's campaign team probably figured the Hispanic vote is as lost as the African vote and picked the guy that has actually tried to cut Washington spending. I do not think Ryan has any skeletons in his closets, but I am sure Lil Barry's team is now scouring his records. Tax returns to school grades to his Jr. Hi sweetheart. All are fair game to the Obama Reelection team.

[JCBreckenridge]

“I’m tired of upside down tickets. 2008 should have been Palin/McCain, and 2012 would be much better as Ryan/Romney (although better still with Romney not even on the ballot). Still, our choices are what they are. If Obama wins, there is less than a 1% chance of America surviving as a free country until 2016. If Romney wins, the destruction will be much slower, and we will probably have a 50-50 chance of reversing the slide after 2016. That’s a huge improvement, and probably the best chance we have left.”

Don’t you know - Conservatives have to sit in the back of the bus.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Good pick.
Maybe Paul can light a fire...

[nathanbedford]

With this pick Mitt Romney has made his intentions clear, he will run this campaign on the economy, and with Paul Ryan on the ticket that means control of deficits and debt, a commitment to the electorate to restrain spending and which in turn explicitly includes reform of entitlements. Ryan since the 2010 election has been publicly declaring that it should be the strategy of the Republican Party to work with Obama where possible but, anticipating that would not be possible, to offer the electorate a clear choice. That is why he presented his competing budgets, to make explicit the choice.

In other words this choice should reassure many conservatives that it will be the strategy of the campaign to depart from the passive aggressive approach of the John Boehner House of Representatives and embark on an explicit attack on the Obama economy. I hope the attack also includes a indictment of Obama as a rank socialist, a radical Alinsky redistributionist whose definition of "transformation" ultimately means the death of capitalism and democracy. I fear this is unlikely for these reasons which follow. I also hope that this attack includes a clear warning to the people of the existential threat facing the nation recently described by Marc Steyn as a "death spiral."

Many of us question why Romney has been relatively passive in his campaign against Obama when he was ruthlessly aggressive in his attacks which brought down competing Republicans in the primaries. I think his advisors tell him that he is pursuing two different electorates in the primaries as opposed to the general. In the primaries one is dealing with a committed base who want red meat and in the general one seeks to enlist the independents and undecideds who supposedly resist negative campaigns. I think this is much overblown. History reveals that truly vicious negative attacks such as those waged by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater were extremely effective with independents who became convinced that Goldwater would blow up the world. I believe that successful negative campaigns do not experience blowback when the candidate who wages it is likable. I think that both Ryan and Romney have the kinds of personas that will shield them from such criticism if they choose to attack, but that, of course, will be Ryan's job for which I think he is well-suited if he is temperamentally fit.

Ryan will not be flummoxed in the debate and he is very unlikely to make any serious gaffes on the stump so, from a practical political point of view, he fulfills the first criteria for a vice presidential pick, he will likely do no harm. Of course, that consideration follows only after the pick can be confidently presented as the man who can succeed to the presidency in the event of tragedy. Ryan fills those requirements splendidly.

His selection focuses the nation on the state of the economy. That is the terrain on which Romney has elected to run, probably at the expense to some minor extent of litigating the social issues. I am a social conservative in many respects as well as a fiscal conservatives but I am not concerned in this cycle about the ticket concentrating on spending, taxes, and jobs because I believe that the nation is careening toward a fiscal cliff from which there could be no recovery which would satisfy a conservative. This is a question of saving democracy and capitalism not advancing social issues which will die with the Republic-apart always from abortion which remains a dealbreaker for me.

I am concerned that the candidates will look like two nerds in a pod. Balancing that is the knowledge that Ryan is extremely likable, extremely telegenic, and therefore able to carry a negative message against Obama without appearing mean-spirited. Both of these guys are tall, physically attractive, physically fit and not the caricature by any means of nerds.

No candidate, of course, comes without negatives and Ryan's budget plan does open the door to demagoguery from the left but that is only the kind of demagoguery we get with Ryan rather than the kind of demagoguery we would get with another pick. In other words, we know how our enemy operates and if we are going to be compelled to wage a campaign against demagoguery let us at least do it when the subject matter is the budget.

My other choice for the slot was Marco Rubio and either man would have the advantage of being the right age in 2020 to make a credible candidate. I believe we are going to win the election this cycle and, if Romney can perform credibly, the next. But I am extremely concerned about the downstream effect of the demographic wave that is engulfing the nation with immigrants who simply do not share the culture, language, or understanding of the rule of law, of capitalism, of democracy all of which are part of our national fabric. Those who are not immigrants are being "transformed" at a frightening pace into welfare and entitlement dependents who will be likely to vote their purses.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Good choice, Romney!!! You have my vote now...and a $25.00 campaign contribution. And.....Wisconsin. you gave a smashing victory to Governor Scott Walker, just a few weeks back. Time to give the electoral votes of the great state of Wisconsin to Mitt Romney & “The Wisconsin Blue Collar Kid”, Paul Ryan!!!

And.....Yep, you good folks down Virginia way, please turn out with gusto and determination Today in greeting Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan as they travel on their campaign tour bus through the great state of Virginia. Folks, we got us a country to save here!!! Let’s get on with it, big time, starting today!!!

[Senator_Blutarski]

I can’t wait to watch Ryan debate with Biden.

[Wizdum]

Ryan appeals to the Tea Party wing of the GOP. He is awesome in front of crowds, has more intelligence that Plugs(do really believe the Dhims would trust Biden with the button?)
He will literally destroy Biden or Oblabber in ANY kind of debate on the economy.

EXCELLENT PICK!!!

[NCDragon]

OUTSTANDING analysis! We share some valid concerns with this selection. Although, I feel that now we have a chance to turn the poorly planned,(and executed), attacks by the media and the Oba-Messiah’s campaign on their heads, and do so in an intelligent manner without becoming spattered with the filth.

The economy is not going to all of a sudden become golden to support Obama’s cause. A lil “R&R” for the country, (wonderful slogan!), is called for to set things straight.