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Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate
Shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern time Saturday, Republican candidate Mitt Romney officially announced (via phone app) his selection of 42-year-old Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as running mate for the 2012 U.S. presidential race. Ryan's selection was announced by the Romney campaign to various media outlets earlier this morning. Ryan is considered popular among a wide range of Republican voters, being a budget hawk who favors less liberal laws concerning abortion. Ryan's lauded popularity among Tea Party voters is mixed; some reports describe him as a Tea Party favorite, others as a far-right imposter.
Looks like the story from the other day about knowing Romney's VP from Wikipedia edits was wrong.
Wikipedia Edits Forecast Romney's Vice Presidential Pick
So you think that skin color or gender is what makes a person correct for a given job? Do you understand how absurd that actually sounds? I guess not.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why pick a guy that appeals to those on the far right of the spectrum when you already know none of those people would ever vote for Obama....
Maybe Romney will try to paint himself as more of a moderate now?
I always thought that Romney (or McCain the last time) had chosen Colin Powell it would have been a much better strategic decision to fight the Democrats. You'd also be showing people that you were planning a split from Bush in many ways.
Of course that'd be logical, and not something the crazies that have taken over the Republican party would listen to. I think the GOP needs to go full retard/crazy and get their electoral asses handed to them a few times for sense to come back to them—I'm just worried that the lesson they would learn is not that they've gone too far, but haven't gone far enough.
Thankfully I'm Canadian so I only have to worry about the secondary effects of all this madness.
If he was, I think Ryan has decided to not being him back.
Paul Ryan proposed an additional 6% budget cut for NASA in the Ryan Budget so that he could increase DOD spending.
Sorry, it's more important that we kill each other than understand our place in the universe. Have a good day.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
...likely be motivated to come out and vote against him.
I hope so. Reading some of the comments on The Washington Post is disturbing. There seems to be a vocal group that thinks president Obama can now just cruise to victory. That's the kind of complacency that loses elections.
Yeah, the far right will never vote for Obama. But if they think they're being ignored they might not vote at all.
There's also the matter of mending fences with the party leadership and other power brokers, who control money, volunteers, etc. All of them are solid far right these days. They were the ones that wouldn't let McCain have a moderate running mate.
Those are all good reasons, and I just want to add one more: Ryan looks like he has a plan.
I might think that Ryan's policies would be about as effective as literally setting fire to the entire United States, but the fact remains that he's worked hard at outlining his plan and putting it out there. Romney has been on the defence his entire campaign, ever since he came out as the "one to beat" in the Republican primary. Bringing Ryan into the fold might make it look like he has an actual vision for his presidency now, and puts something up that Obama will have to respond to.
Unlike the US, we actually got the whole continent in ruins during WWII, Had a whole generation wiped out WWI, had a pretty horrible ware in 1870, and Napoleon invented the whole concept of world war. And yes, we also did the whole colonisation and genocide thing.
Basically, historically, we are the worse bastards ever to grace this not-so-peaceful Earth. So we know, deep in our bones, all the horrible mistakes you can make. We've been there. You want an absolute yardstick of what not to do? Look at us. We are that absolute yardstick.
And if you are trying for worse, well, I sure hope you fail.
Plenty of conservatives look at Obama and look at Romney and don't see a lot of difference (from their point of view). If it doesn't matter (to them) who wins, why bother voting?
Plenty fo liberals feel the same way.
The problem is that any discussion of voting reform has to be somewhat academic, since there is math involved, and somewhat philosophical, since it's not about any issues per se but in how we decide what to do about the issues.
The American people are too uneducated, it seems, to have this discussion -- our political conversations basically come down to "How can I get more cookies from the government at someone else's expense?"
Ah yes, the man who routinely wins a two thirds margin despite his district not having voted for a GOP president since 1984 is disliked by his constituents.
even more so once you consider that both parties are right wing by any sane standard...
By what standard? The far-left standard? Jeez, if you're to the right of Mao Zedong you get tarred and feathered these days.
How about by the standards of the right wing just a generation ago right here in the good ole USA.
Reagan's tax policies and Obama's are very close. Broad cuts (or in Obama's case extention in existing cuts) in rates and closing loopholes for the rich. Obama's signature bill was his medical insurance reform act, was a slight mod of the early '90's Republican health care alternative to Hilarycare. Obama has continued extra-judicial detentions of bush, the domestic surveillance of bush, the wars of bush, and has radically expanded the extra-judicial assasinations via drone strikes that bush started. A generation ago it was unthinkable for any politician left or right to attack social security or medicare. The democrats, while still getting some support from unions, have completely abandoned returning that support. Obama is pushing a trade deal with So. Korea that like NAFTA is based on looney right wing economic falderol. Obama and Clinton's supreme court nominations only appear liberal in comparison to the new conservative justices. Kagan and Sotomayor don't hold a candle to any of the great liberal justices of the mid-twentieth century. Recall that Nixon signed into law the EPA, OSHA, and the Endangered Species Act. Hell Nixon didn't just sign the EPA bill, he proposed it! Obama has been a big supporter of big oil and big military spending. Obama has also done nothing to restrict gun rights.
In fact with a few exceptions the Democrats of today look a lot like the Republicans of 20 or more years ago. Those exceptions obviously include social hot-button issues like abortion/women's right to choose, and gay marriage/protect marriage. The other big exception is that Obama after his continuation of big bailouts and stimulus started by bush to save the economy from the freefall we were in, has been that Obama has actually tried to reign in the deficit unlike his borrow and spend republican opponents.
The reason that the US seems so politically polarized today is that the Democrats have only strolled to the right during the last 30 years while the Republicans have been sprinting to the right, while the people who haven't been infected by fox etc have remained mostly in place.
-- QED