So Romney's chosen a Veep candidate; Paul Ryan. The Obama team is over the moon about it; most folks in focus groups can't believe Romney actually wants to do what Ryan said the country should be doing, and Obama's folks have been doing everything that could to tie Romney to Ryan. Now Romney has done it for them.

Well, at least the election just got more interesting; Romney is not longer just the Not-Obama, he's pushing a specific policy proposal right in everyone's face, and daring them to choose.

While Romney's chances were already looking bad, I'm pretty sure he just lost the election today.

Now that Ryan himself (not just the budget he proposed) will get more coverage get ready to watch the mainstream media completely ignore his devotion to Ayn Rand's athiest, money worshiping philosophy. Or if they do dare mention it, buy his lie to the Christian base that he was only into it when young and now rejects it.

Romney lost the minute he was the official nominee.

Paul Ryan, a.k.a. "Flim-Flam Man", a.k.a. He of the Magical Asterisks? The guy whose overhyped budget plan consisted of:

1. Cut social programs
2. Cut taxes for the rich by a whole lot more
3. Magical Asterisks???
4. Profit!

Deary deary me. At least it wasn't Michelle Bachman.

Actually, I wonder what impact this will have among Paul Ryan supporters. He has a (mostly undeserved) reputation as a serious budget-balancing hawk, and an ideologically pure libertarian, all big pluses for people who like that sort of thing. I wonder what yoking himself to Richie "I Probably Shipped Your Job Overseas" Rich is going to do to his fanbase.

I think you might be right, FB, but this was probably pretty close to the only move Romney could possibly have made that would have had any chance of success. He needs to energize the Ron Paul supporters, and Paul Ryan is a fantastic way to do that. All he's doing is placing a very longshot bet on the apathy of Demoncrats and the disillusionment of liberals paving the way to his victory.

At the very least, this can help the Republicans pull together some wins in close congressional races.

Someone must have told him he needed more P.R.

As a Ron Paul supporter I would like to say that Paul Ryan as a VP candidate for Romney still will not get me to vote for him.

The Ryan pick is, IMHO, about the best of the bad choices that Romney had. You had a short list that was short on pretty much everything, and Ryan at least appears to have a pulse and some (albeit bad) ideas about how to go about fixing what's busted about the budget process.

I think the R/R campaign gave up on trying for moderate votes a while back; polling is seeming to indicate that most voters have decided already and thus the fight is to get your supporters pumped up to go out and vote. The Ryan pick makes perfect sense in this light. Nobody that wasn't going to vote for a Republican will change their mind with the Ryan pick but I think a number of people who dislike Romney might get out of their easy chairs and vote for that ticket now that Mr. Budget Guy (tm) is on it.

The way I see it the Republicans lost the 2012 election back in '07/'08 when the economy finally melted down at the end of the Shrub presidency while fighting two insurgency wars abroad. It'll take a few more years to wash away the sour taste of that from the American mouth.

I think you're right, bots. They must be hoping that the Democrats are too disillusioned to go out and vote for Barack "I didn't fix anything" Obama and Joe "Invisible Man" Biden.

I find it sad that Biden has been our VP for four years now, and I still don't know anything about him. No one ever really talks about him, at least in the social circles and news outlets I frequent.

I would say Barack "What Hope and Change?" Obama, rather. My problem is not so much that he didn't fix anything, it's that he didn't even really try. He banged his head on Republicans for four years instead of doing something useful.

What choices did Romney actually have? (Not entirely a rhetoric question, because i have not followed the republican campain that closely)

I guess he himself covers the pragmatic centrist bit, with having installed Obamacare on state level, before it had been called that. He might convince centrists, that things aren't going to be eaten as hot as they are cooked with him.

If he takes an other centrist pragmatic running mate, the message he would be most likely sending is, that under him things will basically be the same as under Obama, only with more rightwing window dressing. Obama shows pragmatism and lacks boldness. A pragmatic opporunist, with an other pragmatic offers to be exactly the same, and it would turn into a match, whos supporters get less disinterested. It also would finally cost him the support of thoose hard core republicans, who don't really consider him one of theirs.

If he takes a religious right, the mate runs into danger of being seen as Palin without boobs. (or Palin II, if female) And anyway it would be a repeat of the strategy that didn't work last time. Trying something again, that has not worked is hard to sell as good decision making, even if you have very good arguments, that it would work this time.

He could take someone with a good military track record and little definite stances on domestic politics. But either that can be spun as a preperation for more military adventureism, that AFAIK would not be popular at the moment, or the mate could strongly identify as isolationist, which could mean problems with the imperealist wing of the republican party.

So with centrism, religious conservatism and military discarded, what is left for a republican other then budget hawkery. With taking a radical ideologist Romney shows boldness and shows that he shows that he is not turning his back on the republican base. And with his own track record as opportunist he might convince centrists, who are republican leaning, but not overly so, that practically he will not change all that much.

And if he looses, if he did pick an ideological choice, he can spin the narrative of doing the right thing against the odds and having lost honorably. If he takes a visibly macciavellistic tactic choice and looses, he is just a plain looser. If he wants to preserve chances for a second attempt, or other future career options or just cares about his legacy, a bold ideological choice would be the choice of a Macciavellist, who hedges his bets.

For the record, Paul Ryan is ALSO a staunch social conservative, a devout Catholic, and supporter of pretty much everything the Religious Right could ask for.

Pretty sure you should have put on a pair of sunglasses in the middle of that sentence in anticipation of Roger Daltrey screaming "Yeah!"