@ BobLibDem
What do you think will be the practical effects of Ryan as the VP pick? Does this put Wisconsin into play, or does it drive that state - and any other possible battleground - further into the Obama camp?
I am really hoping a reporter asks Romney about Ryan and this amendment, and then he makes some quip in response like, “I was talking about the President, not the Vice President”, and then the press can go nuts for a few weeks about how Romney’s picked a guy that he personally doesn’t consider qualified to be president.
Unless the Romney-Ryan team can come up to an effective counter to the “end Medicare as we know it” attack, it will put a lot of states out of reach for the R team- most famously Florida but perhaps Iowa and Pennsylvania as well.
I don’t know if WI has any particular affection for Ryan at the statewide level. They don’t seem to have a disproportionate number of seniors so the Medicare attack will be less damaging to them there. I think a lot of people misread Wisconsin based on the failed Walker recall. A lot of Badgers voted no, not out of any love for Walker or his policies, but they just didn’t feel that a recall was warranted. My net assessement is that the Ryan picked may have helped slightly in WI, but I didn’t see Romney carrying it anyway. Thanks for asking.
Now that this has been dug up I’m sure he’ll have a prepared answer. I’m pretty sure the VP has to meet the same constitutional requirements though.
If Romney makes an off the cuff response, that won’t matter. But I agree it’s unlikely. It’s slightly more likely to happen if it’s some old person in an audience that he’s trying to “connect” to – I’m thinking about the time when he said that corporations are people too.
How long until the Obama team starts running the ads negatively defining Ryan and his budget?
Given what Romney’s business experience says about what he’d do to tax policy as president, that’s actually a terrifying thought for the future solvency of our nation!
That’s why it’s SO important that we understand what Mitt Romney’s thinking is on taxes (and why we must see his tax returns to know first-hand how he has used our current laws), because if he were to become president, the way he has manipulated the tax code during his business experience is very likely what he would do to it if he had actual control over it.
The authors of the quoted article below frame their headline as a question, but they make it quite clear that Mitt Romney reviewed and approved an illegal tax maneuver that invented imaginary, non-existent losses out of thin air, for the sole purpose of tax obligation avoidance while the head of the audit committee of the the Board of Marriott International.
This cannot really be how people think our country should be run, can it? The middle class, our national infrastructure, and our entire way of life is gravely damaged when the wealthy elite and big corporations shirk their responsibilities to pay the taxes they OWE. I beg of everyone to consider this before they vote. We cannot have this man and his new partner in prosperity destruction at the helm of our nation.
That amendment was so three years ago. Much like his tax returns, or his work at Bain, or his healthcare, we need not concern ourselves with anything he did prior to 2010.
The sooner the better. Yesterday, if possible. You want to define your opponent before he can define himself. I thought the timing was a bit odd, one would think that you wouldn’t want to bury it in the last Saturday morning of the Olympics. Now for the two weeks until the convention, the Romney team has to try to outhustle the Obama team in defining Ryan. It’s my opinion that the Obama team was readier to take on this battle than the Romneyites.
The ads started running as soon as the announcement was made.
They did? So, they were already scripted, shot, and in the can before the announcement was even made?
I’ve gotten at least half a dozen emails from the Obama campaign since Saturday about the choice or Ryan and his budget and stance on health care. I expect TV and radio ads will take another couple days.
BobLibDem, my understanding of WI is the same. My mother lives in rural western Wisconsin (has for nigh on 30 years) and didn’t support the recall, not because she likes Walker (far from it - she’s more lefty than I am), but because she didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it. Just because you disagree with someone’s policies isn’t a reason to have a recall, in her opinion. “We voted for him, now we’re stuck with him” was mostly her thoughts. (“We” as inclusive of all Wisconsinites, not her personally.)
Among other Wisconsinites in my family (my dad, and my in-laws specifically), there were also also those who voted for Walker in the recall election - again, not because they like him or agree with his policies, but rather as a “we’ll show you” type protest against those who brought the recall to fruition. (Incidentally, Mom thought this was ridiculous. While she wasn’t for the recall itself, she was going to take the chance - since it was available - to cast her vote against him, not that it mattered. To vote contrary to your thoughts and beliefs just as a protest jab was a wasted vote, in her opinion, and mine.)
So the Walker recall has to be viewed through a bunch of different lenses, and not just as a simplistic conservative v. liberal conflict.
As for how Ryan keeps getting re-elected, I’ve no idea. (I’ve the same question about Bachmann here in MN.) It’s true that much of the Milwaukee area is more conservative than Madison, sometimes notably so. And I think it’s not too much of a stretch to characterize Janesville, Kenosha, and Racine as trending conservative as well. Particularly Janesville, in contrast to liberal Madison just up the road.
Yup, this ad started running as soon as the announcement was made.
I’d imagine that the Obama campaign had ads for all the likely VP picks in the can for at least a week. Although the theory that Obama basically picked Ryan for Romney by playing him up as a leader of the conservative side for the last three/four years is entertaining. 11-dimensional chess!
But that would be crafty, cunning, and even a bit devious! And these were Democrats, you say?
I’m not sure what an attack ad against Rubio or Portman would have looked like.
The impression that I’m getting from this whole thing is that the Ryan pick effectively puts the GOP and Tea Party bases en route to do two things: (1) Vote against Obama (which was already going to happen), and (2) vote for Paul Ryan. That’s the calculation that I think Mittens made with this decision; he knew that he couldn’t consolidate the base of his party because nobody really likes him anyway, so he had to get somebody on the ticket who could energize the ultra-conservatives in his base.
But again, nobody is voting for Mitt Romney, and Mittens can’t win if he only gets the support of his base. Moreover, he has already been defined negatively by the Obama team, and negative definitions of Ryan, which won’t dissuade the die-hards from voting for the GOP candidate, could cause the remaining persuadables to move towards Obama. Folks who lean center-right might even switch to Obama as well, or, more likely, just stay home and not vote for anybody.
I don’t know. Ryan appeals to the politically tuned-in base of the GOP, to the Tea Party, and…that’s it. There just seems to be a lot of downsides and risks to having Ryan on the ticket, and if the Obama team can negatively define him then that might seal the race.
One thing’s for sure, though: the Obama camp needs to get out an anti-Ryan ad campaign PRONTO and kick it into fucking overdrive. Get it out before the conventions so that voters already have a sour impression of Ryan going into the Tampa madness.
I am like your mom. I wouldn’t sign the petition because I was opposed to the recall, but once it was on the ballot I voted for Barrett.
The Demcratic Party has done a whole lot to piss people off in WI in the last couple of years. I, and a lot of other people, was pissed that the “Wisconsin Thirteen” bailed out of state and essentially shut down the legislature rather than vote against the budget. Then there was the whole “outing” of non-voters just before the recall election – that pissed TONS of people off, again including me. So my fear is that the antics of the state party might cost Obama some support that he might otherwise have got.
I said “close to a statistical dead heat”. The point I was making is that both sides seem to act like their guy is a slam-dunk to win, but the reality is that the race is reasonably close and either side could still win. Talk about how Romney should realize he has no chance to win is silly.
Yes, Obama is slightly ahead. Since May, that lead has wavered between 1 point and about 4.5 points. That’s nothing at this stage of the game, and like I said, it’s almost within the margin of error. In fact, the last three polls on the RealClearPolitics site are the Gallup tracking poll, which has them tied, the Rasmussen tracking poll, whch has Romney up by +3, and the Politico/Battleground poll, which has Obama up by +1. All three are well within the margin of error.
Obama also has the advantage of incumbency, which right out of the gate makes him the favorite to win the election, all else being equal. He has also unleashed a barrage of nasty attacks at Romney, which Romney has been largely unable to respond to because of campaign finance laws - he can’t use the money raised for the presidential campaign until he’s officially the nominee for President.
Romney is way ahead of Obama in fund raising. After the convention, he’s going to carpet-bomb the media with over a billion dollars in advertising. Obama’s burn rate of money is way higher than Romney’s, and he’s burning it faster than he’s raising it. Also, the convention will almost certainly give Romney a bounce, and probably a larger bounce than Obama will get, simply because Romney is an unknown and Obama isn’t.
In short, if Romney can stay near the margin of error with Obama until Labor Day, it’s a whole new ball game. Obama is still the favorite to win, but it’s not a closed case by any stretch of the imagination.