Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate. By making the choice now ahead of the convention, Romney appears to be changing strategy. He has decided that he can no longer just point the finger at Obama's record and win. By selecting Ryan, who has made extensive proposals on social security, medicare and medicaid reforms, he will have to put out specific ideas to the voters. If your running mate has put out specific proposals, you can't just say things like "I am going to create a million jobs and cut the deficit" without telling us how you are going to do it.
The Democrats like the Ryan choice because now they have something specific to attack. It is hard to know how this will play out. I think in most states, the vp choice will not make much difference. Ryan can energize the Republican base and the Tea party people to be more enthusiastic for Romney. I think that Ryan will only make a difference in two states: Wisconsin where Ryan would help Romney and Florida where he would hurt him because the large number of seniors who don't want big changes in their social security and medicare. Since Florida has 29 votes to 10 for Wisconsin, I think Ryan will be a negative for Romney overall. A better choice, politically, would be Rob Portman of Ohio since that is a toss up state with more votes than Wisconsin and Portman would not alienate the seniors in Florida.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
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I've been waiting for this blog since this weekend. I am a bit disappointed about the choice, but am not surprised because we had heard Ryan's name as the top candidate for a while now.
ReplyDeleteMy personal choice would have been Rubio out of Florida. His ties to the Tea Party are greater than Ryan's but I think Florida is a state that Romney needs.
The only thing is I am not sure if people are past his statements that his parents were exiled from Cuba. He seems to be a strong leader and popular with the Latinos down there and that would only help Romney.
Also, I think Rubio was Mormon at some point, so I wonder if they would get along well.
Oh well, the point is now moot.
I am not looking forward to the next few months with all the attack ads. They were already pretty bad for the primaries here and it's just gonna get worse.
-LBOAYM
I would agree that Rubio would help Romney win Florida for sure so that would be a big plus in the electoral college. I don't think that Rubio would be a plus outside of Florida. All other states with big Hispanic votes such as Texas and California are either red or blue for sure. Plus I don't think Mexicans and Cubans are all that close in terms of economics and immigration views. I think that Romney needs to win both Ohio and Florida to win the election whereas Obama may win with one of the two. If Romney had picked a Latino he would probably lose Ohio and other toss ups in the Midwest. If he had picked Portman he may win Ohio and still has a fighting chance in Florida. At least that is how I see it. Apparently Romney believes that Ryan will rally the base better than other candidates for vp. Ryan also may be a better attack dog because he has taken on Obama in public before. I am sure you are right about the attack ads as this is going to be a tight election right down to the wire!
ReplyDeleteI just don't get the Ryan pick. He's much more polarizing than Romney and Mitt's gonna have to answer to Ryan's medicare fix.
ReplyDeleteI think Condy Rice would have been a heckuva VP candidate. I have no idea if she has any political aspirations at this point, but she would have stolen some votes for Romney and added foreign policy credibility.
What do you know about the welfare bill that they keep talking about? Did Obama really try to overturn Clinton's bill (which I liked a lot)? Or is this more rhetoric by the GOP?
-LBOAYM