Romney May Have No Choice But to Pick Paul Ryan
Per Jonathan Chait:
Conservative anxiety has stalked Mitt Romney since the outset of his presidential campaign, expressing itself in a series of hopes that a nominee who was not Romney might win, and then, after his nomination became inevitable, as endless caterwauling for Romney himself to act less … Romney-like. Romney’s vice-presidential selection has begun to serve as a stand-in for these demands, and as recently as a week ago, they split between calls for him to pick Paul Ryan and calls for Marco Rubio.
But since then, Romney’s position has steadily eroded, intensifying the conservative panic. And a report by National Review’s Robert Costa that Romney was giving Ryan strong consideration focused all the attention on the dreamy House Budget Committee chairman and unofficial party leader. Suddenly Ryan’s potential nomination has become the sole locus of the conservative movement’s longings.
The reason Ryan had earlier been deemed unlikely was that Romney intended to run a campaign focused entirely on the economy. His reasoning was sound enough. Romney’s status as the challenger during an economic crisis with mass unemployment was a gigantic asset, but it was (aside from his growing Superpac advantage) his only asset. America still hated the Republican Party, hated its Congressional wing, and bitterly opposed the fiscal priorities it championed. Romney understood that he needed to bring together nearly every voter dispirited with the status quo, and not only those also eager to join a crusade to smash the welfare state.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/romney-may-have-no-choice-but-to-pick-paul-ryan.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Oh, honey, I KNOW the Dems win on that. And clinch two swing states with large elderly populations
Bye-bye, Florida 
Bye-bye, Pennsylvania
What a dynamic duo...
