Paul Ryan is being vetted for VP. I don’t think I’ve been good enough for Santa to bring me this present, but Romney might just be dumb enough to nominate someone that Republicans in West Virginia and Montana are already throwing under the bus.
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[…] posts that Paul Ryan has “submitted his papers” to be vetted for VP. Some people are getting excited at the prospect. I just finished season 5 of The Wire (as the post’s H. L. Mencken quote might imply), so […]
Maude
He should have McConnell for veep.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
well, maybe they already know how the supremes intend to decide. i mean if all they got is the ryan plan, may as well have him riding in the palin seat.
Jewish Steel
Must’ve seduced Romney with those bottomless baby blues.
Linda Featheringill
A lot of Dems would be very pleased with a Paul Ryan VP slot. I imagine that even atheists are prying for it.
But are they going to announce the decision before the convention? September?
metricpenny
Baby, Baby, Baby, Please!
harlana
oh yeah, just the thought of it gets me hot!
come on, Mitt, come on, he’s your guy, you know you want it!
i think if that happened i’d have a politigasm.
Ash Can
That would be awesome. A ticket like that truly would have nothing to sell to the American public but whiteness. And I’d be waiting with bated breath for Joe Biden’s “You, sir, are no John F. Kennedy” moment.
MattF
Don’t forget that Romney would make Ryan’s blue eyes a campaign theme and lie about everything else. Would that be effective? Who knows? Just don’t assume that that it would be straightforward to make Ryan’s bad arithmetic and Galtean grandeur into an issue in the campaign.
tybee
i’m still holding out for allen west.
dr. bloor
So we’re all assuming that the press will do its job and the public won’t be gullible this summer and autumn?
Ryan would be a terrible choice for the country. He may or may not be for Rmoney.
kth
It would be really, really stupid. Unlike McCain in 2008, Romney is within shouting distance of Obama and should not make a risky veep pick. Perhaps Romney feels he needs to seal the deal with the teabaggers; that’s the only way this would make any sense at all.
Jewish Steel
Of course we, the political junkies awake at 8am on a Sunday speculating on a VP choice, know that the Ryan budget is a document forged along side of the kind of thing you might be offered at a crossroads. But does that matter? The GOP will tell any specious lie that benefits them. Didn’t I hear that handsome man was serious? A real Republican thinker?
I wonder what sort of campaigner Ryan is when he’s outside of his R+1 district in WI.
bemused
Romney/Pawlenty = Dull and Duller. Romney/Ryan = Bunsen/Beaker..duo of disastrous lab experiments although I think Ryan is Bunsen, the “brains” and Romney is Beaker, woefully inept assistant.
rikyrah
the title of this post just gave me my chuckle for this morning.
WereBear
Remember when the Romney camp announced they were doing a 180 from McCain and would choose someone boring? Does Ryan have what it takes?
arguingwithsignposts
You’re right. Bieber doesn’t love us that much.
Ash Can
@Jewish Steel: One of the things I like most about the prospect of Ryan running on the Great White Fail ticket is that his “budget” will really be in the spotlight, and sooner or later he’ll be asked questions about it. GOP pols in the past have been given passes by the press for not answering any of the questions asked by those same reporters, by being affable and giving the dimwitted newsies a bunch of folksy bullcrap that they can run with and make their editors happy/meet their deadlines with. Ryan can’t do that; he has no personality, no charisma, and no means of making personal connections with the people around him (unless maybe they too are Ayn Rand fanbois; then they can circle jerk or something). Although the big-name pundits are swooning over his broad shoulders, Romney is being called out, however meekly and tentatively, by reporters for not answering questions or giving even broad details. Because of this, I don’t think Ryan would get much of a pass for doing nothing but tight-lipped stonewalling (which he knows he would have to do since his budget obviously blows).
JGabriel
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Everything I’m hearing is that Romney’s veep pick will probably be Rob “Not of the Tea Party, but Friendly with Them” Portman.
Though Ryan would be a more fun pick.
.
jayboat
@tybee:
Dreamer.
Culture of Truth
Last week I wrote I felt it would be Ryan. Romney is so risk averse he won’t take a position on anything, so by that logic it should be Portman. But surely even he seems he needs to shake this race up a bit, and the media lurves, Ryan, so the downside to a controversial pick is not that great.
rikyrah
It was at the height of the 1980s buyout boom when Mitt Romney went in search of $300 million to finance one of the most lucrative deals he would ever manage. The man who would help provide the money was none other than the famed junk-bond king Michael Milken.
What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.
But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as “junk bonds.”
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/06/24/the_story_behind_mitt_romneys_work_with_michael_milken_it_was_fun_while_it_lasted/?page=1
jrg
A Ryan pick would highlight the fact that “No, Virginia, we cannot keep lowering taxes and pay for Grannie’s medicare/medicaid, and continue to outspend everyone else on the planet on defense”.
The fact that so many Republicans seem to believe 75% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid and NPR, and Santa Clause shits out Lipitor and mobility scooters makes Ryan a very risky pick.
Joey Maloney
@jrg:
How d’ya figure, risky? Do you seriously think the press will disabuse them?
c u n d gulag
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH PLEASE!
I can hardly wait for the two of them to stand together on the Convention floor.
They’ll look like the centerpiece of a Gay December-bridegroom/June-bridegroom Wedding Cake!
Keith
My money is on Pawlenty, in spite of how much of a goober he is.
harlana
remember how cute they were together, on stage and handing out subs, in WI? that’s magic, baby, pure magic.
hells littlest angel
Romney’s VP pick will surely be something that demonstrates what a tin-hearted humanoid he is. I’m hoping for Michael Steele, but I’ll certainly settle for Paul Ryan, whom Romney may imagine appeals to “the ladies.”
redshirt
I’m still betting the VP spot will be filled by pandering to some perceived weakness with Obama. For instance – nominate West because then all the Black folk will vote R! Or nominate a woman and then all them dumb Dem broads will vote R!
This is how they think, sincerely. Has Rmoney’s campaign showed anything approaching competence so far?
Tripod
Rmoney’s natural inclination is to go with a cold, gray stiff like Portman or T-Paw. One of the promises implied by the RMoney candidacy vs 2008 is no game changing mavericky bullshit.
Considering Ryan indicates he’s not a tracking poll stones throw away, but in deep trouble.
The GOP still has the same 270 EV structural problems McCain had. Crossing their fingers with a VP pick and throwing a load of cash into the race won’t flip the mid-western states they need.
kay
I think it’s going to be Ryan, because it plays into both the midwest and conservative Catholics, which are two elements of the Romney Road to Victory, IMO.
My best pick (wanting Romney to lose) would be Portman, because he is as risk-averse and slippery as Romney, no one in Ohio has any idea who he is, either, so he’d be easy to tie to Bush/failed conservative policies. Plus, he got NO scrutiny in 2010 because Lee Fisher (his opponent) ran such a bad joke of a campaign, and the Ohio media were all-in for plutocrat rule.
Portman’s had a long career. No one looked at any of it in 2010. He’s a Bushie, so there’s probably cronyism, corruption and unsavory ties there.
El Cid
Remember, all Democrats are very, very frightened by this. We are very afraid of the power of a Paul Ryan VP pick. We are very afraid that he will make the ticket unstoppable. Repeat.
Valdivia
@kay:
do you really think Ryan would play well in the Midwest? I know he does well in his Conservative district but I don’t see him playing well with independents. Am I wrong?
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
There is no there there. Bain Capital went to Drexel for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: because that’s where the money was. As the story correctly notes, there is no evidence that doing the financing with Drexel had anything to do with intentionally trying to get Judge Pollock to recuse himself. There is also no evidence of any legal wrongdoing in connection with this deal.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Romney without pretending that relatively benign stuff is some sort of big deal.
burnspbesq
@jrg:
Ahh, but that statement is incomplete.
A Ryan pick would be seen as a very forthright statement by Very Serious People that “No, Virginia, we cannot keep lowering taxes and pay for Grannie’s medicare/medicaid, and continue to outspend everyone else on the planet on defense, so we’re going to defund the social safety net that only benefits Them, and You’ll be fine because you’re one of Us, not one of Them.”
I no longer discount the possibility that the American people will vote against their economic self-interest out of a combination of ignorance and fear, and I’m not sure you should, either.
kay
@Valdivia:
I don’t know, I think Ryan has huge problems of his own. IMO, (all) conservatives and (some) liberals over-determined the lasting impact of the Wisconsin recall, led by (as usual) political media.
This works both ways, BTW. I’m not seeing any particular advantage here in the presidential race (understanding my experience is purely anecdotal) from the Issue Two win in Ohio. I think most of the Republicans who voted our way on the state issue are voting GOP in the national race. We’ll get increased enthusiasm from union members, but I don’t think the faithful GOP’ers who abandoned Kasich are switching to Obama. They got a short-term solution to the immediate threat to their paychecks, so who gives a shit about tomorrow, right?
On the other hand, local Republicans thought Kasich would be a wildly successful and well-loved governor, and he’s not that, at all. They were telling me at Christmas parties after the 2010 election that Kasich would “deliver” Ohio to whomever the GOP nominee was, and now Kasich is either no help or a detriment to the national GOP ticket.
As you can see, I have many factors :)
jrg
@burnspbesq: You’ve got a point. If you had told me 10 years ago that a ticket with a moron like Palin on it would get 47% of the vote, I’d have thought you were high.
Valdivia
@kay:
Thank you for the reply Kay. While your information may be anecdotal it is much more based on facts on the ground than the usual palaver we get from the media in general.I tend to think Ryan will be greatly loved by the media but then he will have to come out of that cocoon and campaign in the rest of the country, and the rest of the country ain’t his district in Wisconsin or a cocktail party in DC, I just have a feeling he doesn’t translate well.
kay
@Valdivia:
Also, I was thinking about this today, because I keep comparing this to 2004, and anti-Obama people here don’t seem to have the same enthusiasm as anti-Bush people did in 2004. The anti-Bush people were chomping at the bit in June of 2004. We had anti-Bush people, loads of them, and Kerry was almost incidental and irrelevant to their goal, which was “remove Bush”, but Republicans here are somewhat complacent and smug because they’re a political majority so maybe the anti-Obama fervor is there and I’m not seeing it.
Valdivia
@kay:
I am going to add–since you always talk about the importance of the ground game, which I think matters a lot–that the Financial Times has an article saying Romney will send out a mormon army of volunteers as part of his ground push in swing states. I have to say that sounds to me to be the wrong strategy: the mormon missionaries are very easy to identify and having that kind of volunteer campaigning for you in swing districts? I just don’t see it either.
kay
@Valdivia:
I don’t think it’s hard to figure out what the Obama organizers are doing, now, on the ground, in Ohio. This isn’t rocket science. They are reaching individual voters before Romney gets to them, and persuading them to commit to Obama. It’s a race. Romney is on the air attacking Obama, while Obama talks to individual voters. Romney would be behind Obama in that scenario, because he has to do two things: make Obama unacceptable, and then sell himself as the alternative. Obama just has to do one thing, with these particular voters. Sell himself. of course, that’s assuming we’re looking at this as a choice. The media-conservative assumption is that Obama is already unacceptable, so it’s simply a matter of not-Obama. I don’t know that they’re right. I think assumptions, like the one conservatives-media made here, “referendum on Obama, Romney doesn’t matter” can be dangerous.
kay
@Valdivia:
I anticipated the Mormon volunteers. That just seems obvious to me. I’m just talking about what I’ve seen, and I haven’t seen that, yet. They would stick out here, because there’s only 7,000 people in this town. Again, though, if Romney can’t carry this county easily, by huge margins, he’s doomed anyway, so maybe they wouldn’t come here. Conservatives in Ohio run up the margin in counties like mine, to mitigate the damage they suffer in, well, populated counties.
ruemara
I, for one, am terrified of a Ryan as VP pick. I am shaking in my boots, due to unlimited corporate cash and Ryan as VP. If the Romney campaign talked about these great things in every commercial and campaign stop, I would totally cry. Paul Ryan is a glorious, sexy, magnet to voters and the MSM. Even I would be tempted but could only turn down the Double R ticket because being an Obot rots your brain.
Valdivia
@kay:
this is what I think too and why I think that the Obama team is in a way doing a lot of its work under the radar because the Village just never ever reports on that. I am convinced that while in 2008 the big rallies and the Hope and Change motto mattered the real work that won the election was done on the ground but to the Village is like it never happened, they barely reported it maybe a little on election day. The Romney campaign plays to their prejudices by doing an air war and thinking they can win that way, not to make an ugly analogy but it’s like the Bush team thinking Iraq was a war they would win from the air, which of course they could not conquer and hold a country that way.
It is interesting that they will be sending an army of mormons to Nevada and Colorado–the mormons there will already be voting Romney. The evangelicals might get totally put off by the mormon missionary proselytizing for King Romney. And i just don’t see ex-urban independents liking a religious group doing their political knocking on doors as if it were a mission.
kay
@Valdivia:
I have to work, and I’m procrastinating, so I’ll just leave you with this broad impression. I think the difference between the two campaigns is Romney makes assumptions. The Obama campaign, in 2008 and again this time, assume nothing. They’re thorough, almost neurotically so. Personally, I think that comes from the top, the two candidates.
People who feel entitled make assumptions about what they’re “due” in sort of the natural scheme of things. People who don’t feel entitled assume they’re getting nothing without nailing it down.
Villago Delenda Est
Pawlenty is the guy who killed commuters by not bothering to inspect a major fucking bridge.
Surely that woman who is in charge of vetting will realize this.
Portman. It’s going to be Portman. He’s at least as boring as Pawlenty, doesn’t have the “death to granny!” problem that Ryan has, and doesn’t have a bridge collapsing during his watch.
leinie
@Valdivia:
Oh, the Mormons will be out campaigning for Rmoney, no doubt, but it won’t be the easily identifiable missionaries. Those guys have a purpose for God and they aren’t to be distracted from it. They will be going door to door talking about Jesus and gold plates and families and not politics. They are Fuller Brush salesmen for The Book of Mormon (my husband was one, many years ago, and that’s how he described the experience) and they won’t be distracted from their sales goals. Hell, unless they’ve loosened the rules, those guys aren’t supposed to read the newspaper cuz they aren’t to be distracted by earthly things.
No, the army that is going to go out will be from the local congregations. Obedience is a BIG DEAL for Mormons and is priesthood holders tell you that God wants the Mittbot to be the prez, and you have to play a role in making that happen, they’ll be talking him up every opportunity. They’ll get their youth groups out canvassing, the ladies will talk it up at the PTA, etc.
By all rights, there should be massive IRS investigations into congregations losing tax exempt status, cuz trust me, they’re gonna break those rules, but it won’t happen. The very profitable business that is the Mormon Church won’t sit this one out.
Full disclosure: grew up Mormon, my family still is, my husband grew up Mormom as well, and I live in Idaho, which is like Utah Jr. when it comes to that church. I love my family, but I hate that fucking corrupt institution like you would not believe.
burnspbesq
@jrg:
In order to think that ten years ago, I would have had to be high.
Twenty years ago, we all thought The Handmaid’s Tale was fiction. Now it seems like a significant segment of our society thinks it’s an instruction manual.
Yesterday’s dystopian fantasies are today’s Republican platform.
Valdivia
@kay:
I think you completely nailed it. This is why I always thought Obama would make a good President (and he has) the way eh ran his campaign. The way Romney runs it makes me afraid about this country (also: the assholish pranks and bullying they think are effective and funny)
@leinie:
I really appreciate your answer. Do you think that for non mormons having said army of mormons, even if it’s not the missionaries, but the religious zeal behind it, will play well? Just curious since I have no idea.
gbear
@kth:
Every VP option he has is in the clown car. There are no safe options.
leinie
Here’s the thing about regular, everyday Mormons who aren’t part of the hierarchy and leadership of the church – for the most part, they are the *nicest* people. Seriously. They are clean cut and love their families and do things for others. My mother is so very devout in her church and yeah, she’s my mom so bias, but the woman is a saint. She is always doing things for other people – giving rides and taking food and helping with whatever and you don’t have to be another Mormon for this to happen. Service was a big part of things when I was growing up, and charity as the pure love of Christ. Now I’m generalizing here, because Mormons can be HUGE assholes to, and my experience is the higher up you go in the Priesthood, the greater the likelihood of encountering one, but they get converts because of that whole “take care of each other” thing.
So they are these really nice, helpful people, and they consider all that service and charity to be something that helps in their Missionary work-so people get a good impression, etc. That’s the face that is going to be talking about Mitt being a good family man who will do right by the country, and he has that business experience, so he’ll help the economy, etc.
And they are going to be just like those Obama volunteers who canvas – sincere, everyday people who believe in their candidate. They most likely won’t mention their religion when they talk about him, so it isn’t going to be screaming crazies talking about Gold Plates or white salamanders or white horse prophecies or whatever. They are going to be an easily mobilized group of sincere volunteers.
mpbruss
Re: the title–David Bazan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6u0-QWwv2g
cckids
@kay: Just an anecdote, but last week we had a canvasser come to the door, armed with the voter’s registration rolls, asking if we still lived here, was the info correct, etc. My daughter, who is 17, but will be 18 just before the election, got registered too. The canvasser was very knowledgeable & outgoing. She never asked who we supported; I brought it up, she then told me that she was from OFA & offered contact info in case we wanted to volunteer.
Plus, for the past 2 weekends, there are OFA people at the library registering voters. Again, they aren’t identified as such, they are just signing people up. We’re in NV, and haven’t had the voter ID shenanigans other states have put up with, but they are asking each person “Are you registered to vote at your current address?”, which struck me as a change from the usual. They were signing people up at a pretty good clip, too. Made me smile.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
I keep seeing people saying this, but is it really true? Throw out Rasmussen and Gallup and what happens? Don’t tell me—I don’t really want to know. Polls are bullshit at this point even with the best of intentions, and the intentions of a lot of them are far from the best.
My take is that Mitt is closer than he should be right now, but this is the best he’ll ever do. Now he has to get out in front of the people who only start paying attention after the conventions. He has to pick a VP that won’t either overshadow him or turn off sane people. The circles in that Venn diagram don’t overlap. He’s got to debate Obama—and his Veep pick has to debate Uncle Joe. Good luck with that.
Most of all, the Obama campaign hasn’t really started yet. The Clinton campaign in 1992 was pretty good. Bush’s Lee Atwater campaign in ’88 was devastating for its novelty, but I think the 73% have formed antibodies against that shit now. The Obama organization is simply the best there’s been in any of our lifetimes. My greatest admiration for them is due to the fact that they’re holding their mud until it’ll do some good, and not having people say: “This shit again?” come election day. It takes discipline to ignore all your “supporters” who’re screaming that you’ve betrayed them by not shooting your wad 6 months (or 3 1/2 years) early, but they’ve got it. There’s no way the Mittbot will outperform McCain. It’s impossible.
quannlace
Oh yeah. Don’t forget the Dan Quayle effect. The ladies will love him!
Lojasmo
@Keith:
No way Willard picks timmeh. He will be forever be persona non grata for his “o’Romneycare statement. Would love to see Romney/pawl entry get creamed in Mn.
kideni
I’d like to think that being in the national spotlight would show people the real Paul Ryan. He really doesn’t respond well when challenged — if he can’t run away and hide, he lashes out with taunts, insults, and/or self-pity. My fear, though, is that the media would continue to cover up for him as they have for the past year+, since they can’t admit they were mistaken about him.
The funny thing about Paul Ryan is that he should have a more difficult time in his district than he does — it’s not actually that conservative (although redistricting has made it more conservative than it was in the previous decade), and Democrats usually do well there in statewide races. It’s kind of an odd district in that it has several reasonably sizable population centers (Janesville, Kenosha, and Racine), but those population centers get most of their television and radio media from outside the district (Janesville-Madison, Kenosha-Chicago, Racine-Milwaukee), so races in the district don’t get as much media coverage as you’d think. Also, the Democrats haven’t really tried to run a decent race against him since he’s been in office — they’ve had decent candidates a few times, but the party apparatus has been criminally hands-off. This time around, he has a serious challenger in Rob Zerban, who’s been working at getting his name out there effectively for the past year and has been doing pretty well in fundraising (with no help from the Democratic Party, of course).
Ryan’s usual schtick is to show up at a few listening sessions, carefully scheduled and announced so that only retirees and avid supporters will show up, and maybe do a few parades. He’s actually very good at putting on a charm act for people who want to be fooled. In the past year, since he started promoting grandma starving, he’s actually been challenged by constituents, and he’s shown that the charm is only on the surface. He’s remarkably thin-skinned and cowardly — he refuses to set up meetings with constituents who aren’t showering him with expensive wine, he’s had people arrested at his listening sessions and at his offices if they’ve challenged him, and when a constituent confronted him in last year’s Labor Day parade to ask what Ryan’s plans were help out the unemployed, Ryan offered the guy candy and a Packer’s schedule. Catholics don’t necessarily buy what he’s selling, either. The Nuns on the Bus came through town last week and tried to meet with him to discuss the immorality of his budget, and he just left them to talk to a staffer (he’d been in town the day before for a threesome with Romney and Walker, so it’s not like he was busy).
Valdivia
@leinie:
again thanks for this insight. it’s good to know what the other side will bring to the table.