"Yes, Ryan comes off as nerdier than Romney, but he doesn't come off as much more human. They seem like two slightly different variants of the classic gladhanding candidate for high-school student-body president. Both would be on the debate team, but the Romney model would also be on the football team, whereas the Ryan model would compete in interscholastic math tournaments. Most kids at my high school didn't especially like either type. They only voted for one of them because there was no alternative." ...Robert Wright, Atlantic
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"You don't make a risky pick like Paul Ryan if you think the fundamentals favor your candidate. You make a risky pick like Paul Ryan if you think the fundamentals don't favor your candidate. And, right now, the numbers don't look good for Romney." ... Ezra Klein, WaPo
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"Overall, I guess my take on this is that the Ryan pick helps Romney shore up his tea party base, but otherwise won't have a big effect. Vice presidential choices rarely do, after all.
"Oddly enough, there's one way in which this might make a difference: if he presents such an irresistable target that Democrats take their eyes off the ball and spend too much time going after Ryan instead of Romney." ...Kevin Drum, MoJo
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"Romney’s choice of Ryan will undoubtedly be criticized as capitulation to the right, and this pick does seem to demonstrate that Romney is not able or willing to distance himself from the base of his party. But the good thing about the Ryan pick is that the Presidential campaign will instantly turn into a very clear choice between two distinct ideologies that genuinely reflect the core beliefs of the two parties. And in that sense, Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan is good news for voters." ...Ryan Lizza, New Yorker
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"... This choice shows that Romney, the onetime moderate GOP governor of a blue state, is marching in lockstep with the tea party parade and has not only accepted but embraced his party's lurch to the far end of the ideological spectrum. This is precisely the sort of behavior that Obama yearned for on the part of the Republicans." ...David Corn, MoJo
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"Ryan may not help Romney win this election. ... He may actually hurt the ticket. And there’s a good argument to be made—which Democrats surely will make—that Ryan’s emphasis on austerity is a bad fit for a weak economy. But Ryan’s ideas are important for the future. As the recovery proceeds, we’ll move out of a context in which stimulus made sense, and toward a context in which reining in deficits and debt becomes more essential. We’ll need more attention to those traditional Republican principles. We’ll need more voters, especially young voters, who value those principles. We’ll need a generation that thinks like Paul Ryan.
"The party of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the party of spite and bloviating and recklessness and extremism, isn’t for me. I’m voting for Obama. But four years from now? In a stronger economy, with a runaway debt? And Ryan at the top of the ticket? That’s awfully tempting." ...William Saletan, Slate
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"Paul Ryan: A Good Choice, but Please, Not a 'Serious' One: I hope that when reporters are writing or talking about Paul Ryan's budget plans and his overall approach, they will rig up some electro-shock device to zap themselves each time they say that Ryan and his thoughts are unusually 'serious' or 'brave.' Clear-edged they are, and useful in defining the issues in the campaign. But they have no edge in 'seriousness' over, say, proposals from Ryan's VP counterpart Joe Biden.
"Last year, as the new GOP majority was preparing to accept Ryan's plan as the official House version of the budget, 'brave' and 'serious' surrounded press mention of Ryan's name so often that these became de facto parts of his identification. 'Well, George, some people may not like this plan, but Paul Ryan is making a brave and serious attempt to deal with America's budget problems.' As Jonathan Chait argued in a long and very-much-worth-reading New York magazine article this spring, the 'brave and serious' cliche largely reflected a successful positioning campaign, which many people who view themselves as 'serious"'swallowed credulously." ...James Fallows, The Atlantic
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"The smell of panic: If this summer had gone the way Mitt hoped it would, he'd never be teaming up with Paul Ryan today...
"It’s been a few months since Romney locked up the Republican nomination, and in that time a few things have become clear.
"One is that a significant chunk of swing voters seem willing to consider the state of the economy in context – specifically, the context of what President Obama inherited and from whom he inherited it. Polls continue to show that Americans hold George W. Bush more responsible for today’s economic conditions than Obama. The memory of the meltdown of 2008 and the terrifying free fall that was playing out as Obama was being sworn in has earned the president something of a benefit of the doubt, leading to an approval rating and a head-to-head standing against Romney that are both stronger than they probably should be.
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