I hope your prediction is correct. I’m not nearly as optimistic as you are. There are so many people receiving government money and so much power in the media to disseminate lies and propaganda and so many opportunities for the demonrats to cheat at the ballot box that I think there is a good chance Romney will lose, no matter what he does.
But I do believe Romney made the right choice, maybe even the best choice, with Paul Ryan. And I do believe that he showed true leadership by making that choice. And I further believe that — despite his past — he even showed true conservatism making that choice.
This is not like McCain picking Palin. McCain picked Palin for show. She was a conservative woman who McCain picked to a) have a woman on his ticket and b) convince the conservatives to vote for him. But from the beginning he planned to muzzle her and only have her symbolically at his side.
Anyone who believes that Romney is doing the same thing with Ryan isn’t just ignorant, they are just plain stupid.
Ryan is just another white guy and if he wasn’t picked for his ideas then he wasn’t picked at all. Every indication is he was picked for his ideas. Every indication is he will be on the team as a team fighter, not as some kind of token.
Romney showed leadership here and only the most stubborn will refuse to see that.
I think romney’s advisors sat him down and told him that unless he developed a message or had somebody who did, he was going to lose.. Even during the GOP debates, Romney never had a plan, but would coast in on somebody else’s ideas (me too, I agree with Newt, for example). And he didn’t run “his” businesses single handedly - he was always part of a group of other decision or policy makers.
I even think one of the reasons he was such a liberal in MA is that people are very liberal there, and he wanted to get elected and the best way was to go with the flow.
So I think it’s more self preservation than anything else that got him to pick Ryan.
The big question is, as you say, whether he will treat Ryan the way McCain treated Palin, or whether he will really let him speak, adopt his ideas and support him.
While a lot of people are now receiving government handouts, and many of them are ne’er-do-wells; a significant amount of them are there because there are no other options.
Romney/Ryan needs to make this about jobs. The facts are:
A. Business recovery is horrible
And
Obama is not friendly to business
While
B. Romney is pro-Business
And
(he must make the argument here, and hammer it home) Romney will get businesses going again
The welfare class that likes the free stuff and doesn’t want that to change, will never vote Republican as long as the democrats promise to keep the gravy train running, even if that means stealing the hard-working folks blind.
On the other hand, there are millions out of work and on assistance who want to have a job—even a career. They are the ones Romney needs to target, over and over again.
They have no HOPE, unless they CHANGE the nations leadership.