General Election Thread (no partisan sniping allowed!)

[Bob Green]

Multiple sources are reporting Mitt Romney will name Paul Ryan as his running mate this morning in Norfolk:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-11-05-03-00

It will be interesting to see how the polls react to the news next week.

[SoCalDukeFan]

Multiple sources are reporting Mitt Romney will name Paul Ryan as his running mate this morning in Norfolk:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-11-05-03-00

It will be interesting to see how the polls react to the news next week.

I always thought that to get the nomination one run to the edge (either left or right) and then to get elected ran to the center. Romney looks like he wants to continue running to the right edge.

Also thought he might wait until the Republican Convention to add some suspense to it.

SoCal

[OldPhiKap]

I always thought that to get the nomination one run to the edge (either left or right) and then to get elected ran to the center. Romney looks like he wants to continue running to the right edge.

Also thought he might wait until the Republican Convention to add some suspense to it.

SoCal

Romney needs to shore up his base still, and he is behind by about 9% in the latest polls. Good choice from a tactical point of view IMO.

[bluebear]

Romney needs to shore up his base still, and he is behind by about 9% in the latest polls. Good choice from a tactical point of view IMO.

I could be wrong but I don't see it. I still think the path for both candidates in in the middle. This may shore up and excite the base but they werent voting for Obama anyway. Despite the questions, I think conservatives were already showing up in November just to block a second term. To me, this hurts Romney with key swing moderates like women and especially seniors who I saw breaking in Romneys direction.

[Olympic Fan]

This was a move to shore up his base, not to expand it. Rubio might have helped in Florida and Portman might have helped in Ohio -- two states Romney HAS to win.

Ryan helps energize the conservative base, but brings nothing new to the table.

[snowdenscold]

You haven't been able to watch the Olympics this week without seeing a Romney commercial at every break ... and Obama's been well represented too.

With DVR I've been able =)

[Olympic Fan]

That's why Romney must fight like hell to keep his narrow margin in North Carolina. It's also probably why President Obama is spending at least some resources in North Carolina, even though he doesn't need it. Even if he doesn't win North Carolina, President Obama can still damage Romney there by spending just enough in North Carolina to keep the race competitive, thus forcing Romney to spend more resources than necessary to hang on to a state that he absolutely needs, rather than using those resources to pick off other states that are running even or leaning slightly to Obama. Call it the Guilford Courthouse strategy.

Great allusion ... a tactical defeat that inflicts significantly more damage to the enemy, thus leading to ultimate victory.

I've always thought the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was one of the mopre underrated battles in military history.

[Tom B.]

Great allusion ... a tactical defeat that inflicts significantly more damage to the enemy, thus leading to ultimate victory.

I've always thought the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was one of the more underrated battles in military history.

I thought it an appropriate allusion, seeing as how we were talking about North Carolina.

Looking at the overall race, there's some noise among the various indicators out there right now with some favorable results for President Obama, but also a handful of seemingly contradictory results. Four national polls out this week (Ipsos/Reuters, CNN, Fox and IBD/CSM/TIPP) showed President Obama holding or expanding a modest lead. Perhaps more significantly, all three showed at least some improvement for President Obama from last month's results (in three of the four polls, the improvement was statistically significant or very close to it). Also, CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac had some state polls out that showed a four-point lead for President Obama in Virginia and a modestly bigger lead for him in Wisconsin, though it also showed Romney ahead in Colorado by five. The Wisconsin and Virginia polls were generally consistent with prior polls in those states, or at most, slightly more favorable to President Obama. The Colorado poll represented more of a shift, though, as there hadn't been a Colorado poll in some time that showed Romney with any lead, much less a five-point lead. I'm generally wary of polls that show jumps or shifts of more than a point or so in a short time frame, especially when there's no apparent reason for it -- and in this case, there was no "game changing" event in the last week or two that would account for such a shift, so we'll have to stay tuned and see if it was just noise, or if there's really something else going on.

Speaking of noise, the two main daily tracking polls have been kind of noisy this week. Rasmussen in particular has been bouncing around. First, it's worth noting that while most horserace polls have consistently shown either a dead heat or a modest lead for President Obama, Rasmussen has been one of the few (if not the only) to do the reverse -- it's been showing either a dead heat or a slight Romney lead for the last couple of weeks. Nate Silver of http://www.fivethirtyeight.com (a great resource) has an interesting take on this -- I won't bore everyone with the details, but basically he analyzed Rasmussen's polling methodology and applied a statistical analysis to its historic results, and concluded that Rasmussen has a "house effect" that favors the Republican candidate by a couple of points when compared to the overall combined output of the major polling organizations. So it's not surprising, in his view, that Rasmussen has tended to show more favorable results for Romney. (He also concluded that Gallup has a similar "house effect" that favors the Republican candidate.)

That being said, earlier this week there was a spike in President Obama's numbers that gave him the lead in Rasmussen's poll for a few days. Again, there was no apparent reason for the shift -- Rasmussen attributed it to a "bounce" from last week's better-than-expected jobs report, but if that's the case, it would be the first time in about three months that any poll has shown a discernible reaction to a jobs report, in either direction, in such a short time frame. Also, if there really had been such a change in the electorate's view of the race from that one event, it likely would've shown up elsewhere too, but it really didn't. Gallup's horserace tracking poll, for instance, didn't really move, and in fact has been remarkably steady for quite some time (it has rarely varied more than a point from day to day, and has consistently been showing either a dead heat or a slight advantage for President Obama).

Anyway, since that bounce for President Obama in Rasmussen's poll, the numbers have reverted to where they were before, and are maybe even slightly less favorable to President Obama. Today Rasmussen showed a two-point lead for Romney in the horserace, which is consistent with where it had been before the "bounce," but its measurement of Obama's approval rating was down six points from the bounce and was actually two or three points below where it had been before the bounce. Also, while Gallup's horserace poll has hardly moved in a while, yesterday its tracking poll for President Obama's approval rating was down three points.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Gallup's tracking poll of President Obama's approval rating, and both of Rasmussen's tracking polls (approval rating and horserace), have been noisier than Gallup's horserace tracking poll is that the Gallup horserace poll is based on a seven-day rolling average, while the other three polls are based on only three days. So, the other three polls are much more susceptible to day-to-day differences, while Gallup's horserace poll does a better job of smoothing out those bumps and dips.

The interesting thing to me, though, was that while the snapshot polls this week were pretty consistent in showing President Obama either maintaining or modestly expanding a small lead across the board (with the exception of the CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac Colorado poll), some of the daily tracking polls seemed to show a push for President Obama, or even a slight dip for him. Hence my reference above to a handful of results that seemed somewhat contradictory.

[JasonEvans]

I think the choice of Ryan is a very compelling one because it ties Romney even closer to the controversial Ryan budget. I know some folks who are in tight with the GOP leadership and there has been some concern over how the Ryan budget will play in an election. They started telling me more than 2 weeks ago that Ryan would be the VP pick because he is the best at defending and explaining the Ryan budget. If the GOP and Romney are going to be attached to it, who better than its author to defend it? He is remarkably eloquent talking about it... and that comes from a liberal who thinks the Ryan budget is insanity.

If you do not know what the Ryan Budget is, feel free to read this article from NBC News' blog.

It substantially restructures Medicare; cuts Medicaid, food stamps, and transportation infrastructure; and it reduces the top tax rate from 35% to 25%.

Ryan and his allies say a bold plan - reforming entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid - and slashing discretionary spending is needed to reduce the deficit and debt. But critics argue that the pain comes primarily from the poor and middle class. An analysis from the liberal-leaning Center on Budget Policies and Priorities says that 62% of the spending cuts in the Ryan budget would come from low-income programs, while 37% of its tax benefits would go to those making more than $1 million per year.

The Washington Post already has a blog post up saying that the Ryan Budget will be a major focus of the Dems attack plan--

Poll after poll shows that Americans, while wanting to cut waste in the budget, are strongly resistant to any major cuts or changes in federal entitlement programs. By proposing to overhaul Medicare, Democrats argue, Ryan has handed them an ace in the 2012 election, in large part because many members of the House have voted for the budget and can easily be attached to it.

The NY Times has also weighed in on the Ryan Budget and how the GOP has been unsure of how to react to it. On the on hand, it is exactly what their base seems to want and falls squarely into their mode of lower spending and taxes, but it risks seriously alienating large blocks of voters -- especially seniors.

-Jason "it will be interesting to see how much Ryan dominates the headlines the next week or so as the nation gets to know him better" Evans

[Tom B.]

I think the choice of Ryan is a very compelling one because it ties Romney even closer to the controversial Ryan budget. I know some folks who are in tight with the GOP leadership and there has been some concern over how the Ryan budget will play in an election. They started telling me more than 2 weeks ago that Ryan would be the VP pick because he is the best at defending and explaining the Ryan budget. If the GOP and Romney are going to be attached to it, who better than its author to defend it? He is remarkably eloquent talking about it... and that comes from a liberal who thinks the Ryan budget is insanity.

. . . .

The NY Times has also weighed in on the Ryan Budget and how the GOP has been unsure of how to react to it. On the on hand, it is exactly what their base seems to want and falls squarely into their mode of lower spending and taxes, but it risks seriously alienating large blocks of voters -- especially seniors.

Here's a good read from Nate Silver on the selection. He had done an analysis a while back in an effort to evaluate the degree to which the various potential VP candidates would positively affect Romney's campaign, and he ranked Ryan 10th out of 14 candidates. His bottom line conclusion is that Romney looked at the landscape and figured he could get to 47%, 48% or even 49% on his current path, but he wasn't confident that he could get to 50.1%, so he gambled with Ryan in an effort to shake things up.

[OldPhiKap]

Poll after poll shows that Americans, while wanting to cut waste in the budget, are strongly resistant to any major cuts or changes in federal entitlement programs.

Yeah, I want to lose weight but don't want to give up eating pizza on the couch all day.



I agree that Romney is going to get tied to the Ryan budget, so he might as well embrace it and get its proponent out there. For better or worse, Ryan seems to be the "big idea guy" in the Republican party these days. Sort of like Gingrich twenty five years ago, without the crazy/ego/hypocricy of Newt as far as I know.

Assuming the Democrats attack the proposed cuts to entitlement programs, the question is -- can they do this effectively without proposing some altermative to reign in the federal deficit? It seems to me that Romney/Ryan have a good position to say "Okay, we're willing to be adults and talk about the 600 pound gorilla in the room -- what are you going to do?" I don't watch Fox so I'm not up to speed on the whole "Democrats won't even put forth a budget" meme but it seems to me that (1) most people think we need to change course in some form or fashion; (2) sacrifices need to be made by someone/everyone; and (3) it's time we discuss these things in a meaningful way.

An attack on the Ryan budget seems to me to be problematic in a vacuum. It needs to be tied to Romney's tax plan and his personal tax situation if I am a Democratic strategist. "Romney wants tax cuts for Wall Street while making grandma clip coupons," etc.

[tommy]

After letting it sink in over the weekend, I think I understand the reasons for the selection of Ryan, but I ultimately don't think it's going to help Romney achieve what he sought to achieve with it.

First of all, while not a desperation pick, I think the choice was an acknowledgement by the Romney camp that their man is behind, and either that the strategy they were employing was not a good one, or, more likely, that they were not executing it well. Or both. With a president whose popularity has fallen precipitously in his first term, a stubborn-to-stagnant economy, and a real sense from many voters that the country is on the wrong track in terms of its fiscal policies, the strategy that I think Romney was trying to employ was essentially to provide a plausible, competent alternative to the incumbent. Borrowing from the medical field, be a guy who will "do no harm." Not much more, not much less. That's why he's been so short on specifics as to pretty much any issue of consequence. I think that was a good idea.

In order to execute that strategy, though, you have to maintain focus on the campaign being a referendum on Obama, rather than a contest between two competing visions of the future. Make it a thumbs up-or-down on the incumbent. And the best way to do that is to control the picture of your candidate as it is being developed. This the Romney campaign has done a very poor job of, IMO. For months, the Obama campaign's relentless attacks on Bain Capital, outsourcing, and Romney's tax returns have essentially gone unanswered. The Obama campaign has been able to create the image of Romney that it wants in voters' minds -- tax-avoiding, job-outsourcing plutocrat who has no idea what it's like to walk in my shoes every day of the week. In the meantime, Romney has been spending all kinds of time and money attacking an incumbent who is already very well defined in voters' eyes, as evidenced by the stability in Obama's favorability and unfavorability numbers. Romney should've been filling in the picture of the lesser-known candidate -- himself -- rather than let his opponent do it for him. Big mistake, and I think a big reason why he's trailing in this race.

So I think the Romney camp realized that they needed to do something to reset this campaign, and that the choices of Pawlenty and Portman -- who would've been perfect had the "keep our heads down, just be plausible and competent, and control our own image" strategy been executed properly -- were no longer viable given the hole that has been dug. Enter Ryan. Seems to me that with this selection Romney is giving up on the idea of making this election strictly a referendum on Obama and agreeing to a debate between the two camps about fiscal policy (including, importantly, our approach to entitlements) going forward. Big change in the nature of this campaign. For Romney, however, I'm not sure it's a change that will ultimately help him.

For starters, large, all-at-once ideas on changing our system of entitlements and other aspects of the social safety net have often drawn bitter opposition. See Hillarycare, W's attempt to privatize Social Security, and the ACA for three relatively recent examples. Without question, Ryan's budget plan is a blueprint for fundamental change in Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that remain very popular with the electorate. In particular, they are popular with working class (non-college educated) voters -- who are exactly the voters (well, the white ones anyway) that Romney is going to need to swing the critical states in his direction -- as those voters depend more heavily on that safety net. Women also generally do not relish the idea of slashing critical services such as is called for by the Ryan budget plan. Neither do seniors. I've heard there are a lot of those in Florida. Those are big problems for Romney and Ryan.

Secondly, though Romney undoubtedly believes that the choice of Ryan will enable him to change the subject away from issues like Bain, the Cayman Islands, and his tax returns, I think he is mistaken as to that. To the contrary, the Obama campaign should easily be able to weave the issues of Bain, outsourcing, and Romney's tax avoidance with the details of the Ryan plan into a compelling narrative of what (in its view) this Republican ticket and this Republican Party are all about: selfishness, greed, insensitivity, and secrecy -- all to serve the interests of the very richest Americans, whose need for more and more tax cuts has no end, and must be serviced no matter the damage it does to the rest of us.

As for the polls, I would expect a modest bump for Romney in a few select states this week, but nothing spectacular, and would further expect that in a relatively short period of time, the numbers will revert to pretty much where they had been. This race has been remarkably stable, and I just don't see the choice of Ryan having a substantial short term effect on a race where -- despite there still being large numbers of undecided voters in key states -- the candidates have been settled in for awhile without much movement.

[Tom B.]

After letting it sink in over the weekend, I think I understand the reasons for the selection of Ryan, but I ultimately don't think it's going to help Romney achieve what he sought to achieve with it.

First of all, while not a desperation pick, I think the choice was an acknowledgement by the Romney camp that their man is behind, and either that the strategy they were employing was not a good one, or, more likely, that they were not executing it well. Or both. With a president whose popularity has fallen precipitously in his first term, a stubborn-to-stagnant economy, and a real sense from many voters that the country is on the wrong track in terms of its fiscal policies, the strategy that I think Romney was trying to employ was essentially to provide a plausible, competent alternative to the incumbent. Borrowing from the medical field, be a guy who will "do no harm." Not much more, not much less. That's why he's been so short on specifics as to pretty much any issue of consequence. I think that was a good idea.

In order to execute that strategy, though, you have to maintain focus on the campaign being a referendum on Obama, rather than a contest between two competing visions of the future. Make it a thumbs up-or-down on the incumbent. And the best way to do that is to control the picture of your candidate as it is being developed. This the Romney campaign has done a very poor job of, IMO. For months, the Obama campaign's relentless attacks on Bain Capital, outsourcing, and Romney's tax returns have essentially gone unanswered. The Obama campaign has been able to create the image of Romney that it wants in voters' minds -- tax-avoiding, job-outsourcing plutocrat who has no idea what it's like to walk in my shoes every day of the week. In the meantime, Romney has been spending all kinds of time and money attacking an incumbent who is already very well defined in voters' eyes, as evidenced by the stability in Obama's favorability and unfavorability numbers. Romney should've been filling in the picture of the lesser-known candidate -- himself -- rather than let his opponent do it for him. Big mistake, and I think a big reason why he's trailing in this race.

So I think the Romney camp realized that they needed to do something to reset this campaign, and that the choices of Pawlenty and Portman -- who would've been perfect had the "keep our heads down, just be plausible and competent, and control our own image" strategy been executed properly -- were no longer viable given the hole that has been dug. Enter Ryan. Seems to me that with this selection Romney is giving up on the idea of making this election strictly a referendum on Obama and agreeing to a debate between the two camps about fiscal policy (including, importantly, our approach to entitlements) going forward. Big change in the nature of this campaign. For Romney, however, I'm not sure it's a change that will ultimately help him.

For starters, large, all-at-once ideas on changing our system of entitlements and other aspects of the social safety net have often drawn bitter opposition. See Hillarycare, W's attempt to privatize Social Security, and the ACA for three relatively recent examples. Without question, Ryan's budget plan is a blueprint for fundamental change in Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that remain very popular with the electorate. In particular, they are popular with working class (non-college educated) voters -- who are exactly the voters (well, the white ones anyway) that Romney is going to need to swing the critical states in his direction -- as those voters depend more heavily on that safety net. Women also generally do not relish the idea of slashing critical services such as is called for by the Ryan budget plan. Neither do seniors. I've heard there are a lot of those in Florida. Those are big problems for Romney and Ryan.

Secondly, though Romney undoubtedly believes that the choice of Ryan will enable him to change the subject away from issues like Bain, the Cayman Islands, and his tax returns, I think he is mistaken as to that. To the contrary, the Obama campaign should easily be able to weave the issues of Bain, outsourcing, and Romney's tax avoidance with the details of the Ryan plan into a compelling narrative of what (in its view) this Republican ticket and this Republican Party are all about: selfishness, greed, insensitivity, and secrecy -- all to serve the interests of the very richest Americans, whose need for more and more tax cuts has no end, and must be serviced no matter the damage it does to the rest of us.

As for the polls, I would expect a modest bump for Romney in a few select states this week, but nothing spectacular, and would further expect that in a relatively short period of time, the numbers will revert to pretty much where they had been. This race has been remarkably stable, and I just don't see the choice of Ryan having a substantial short term effect on a race where -- despite there still being large numbers of undecided voters in key states -- the candidates have been settled in for awhile without much movement.

Well, damn. Here I was about to bang out an "After letting this sink in over the weekend, here's what I think..." post, only to find that someone already wrote one that says...pretty much everything I was going to say.

I'll add a couple of things, though -- and I'll start by echoing one of your points. After thinking about it, I was struck by how the pick really constitutes a total departure from Romney's approach to the election thus far. He's been running for President for almost two years, and while part of that time was spent in the primaries, even then he was really running with at least one eye looking towards the general election.

As an aside, some might say that's why it took him longer than it should've to put away his primary opponents. Rather than focusing on beating them and then pivoting, he was trying to run two campaigns at once, and thus lacked total focus on the opponents and the task immediately before him. Had he been properly focused, maybe he would've dispatched the primary opponents sooner (let's be real, it was a really weak field -- the only one with the juice to have mounted a legitimate primary threat to Romney was Rick Perry, and Romney got a huge gift when Perry stepped all over himself right after entering the race), and he would have emerged looking triumphant and with momentum. Instead, the primaries dragged on, inspiring countless pundit pieces about how Romney couldn't "connect" or "close the deal," and when he finally did emerge, he was battered and looked weaker than he should've.

But I digress....

It's been clear for some time that Romney's general election strategy was to make the race a referendum on President Obama and the economy, not a "choice" election. To that end, he offered few (if any) real specifics on himself or his plans. He even minimized (and is still minimizing) to the point of virtual non-existence the one part of his professional biography that should be the most relevant to evaluating him as a presidential candidate -- his one term as governor of Massachusetts. He thought he could just keep reminding people of the sluggish economy and lob TV ad bombs at President Obama, then present himself as a successful businessman, and that would be enough.

The point he missed, though, was that presidential elections are almost always a choice. Heck, the whole system is set up to create a binary choice for the voters. Even when an incumbent has weaknesses, the challenger must convince the electorate -- especially the much-coveted "swing voters" -- that he's a better alternative. It's almost never enough to be a mostly-empty suit and hope that the voters will just pour their hopes into you without first kicking the tires and asking, "What would you do differently? Why do you think you'd do better? Can I trust you? How can I be sure that you'll be attentive to the things that matter to me?"

I've heard too many pundits in the last 48 hours describe the Ryan pick as "bold," but I don't think it was bold at all. The bold thing for Romney to do would've been to run as what he probably really is at heart -- a center-right pragmatist who's more at home crunching numbers and giving management training seminars than engaging in idelogical chest-thumping or culture-warring. Romney didn't need to avoid a "choice" election -- he just needed to make it about the right choice. He needed to say, "I'll be a better executive and a better manager than my opponent," and then tell people why. To do that, you have to open the book on yourself -- but Romney didn't do that, and the Obama campaign was more than happy to fill in the blanks for him. The whole tax return thing had (and still has) legs not so much because people really think there's something scandalous or damning in Romney's tax returns, but because it's a symbol of how Romney is trying to hold the electorate at arm's length and keep the people from really knowing him. It creates around him the very image that the Obama campaign wants him to have -- that of a sheltered elite who doesn't want to get too close to the Little People, but would rather look down upon them from a pedestal and dictate to them what they do and don't need to know. The Ryan pick wasn't bold -- it was an acknowledgment that what he'd been doing wasn't working.

I'm not sure, though, that the Ryan pick is the right fix for Romney's problem. The Ryan pick is an abandonment of the Romney strategy because it's a concession that this will not only be a choice election, but an election where the choice is about ideology, not management competence. As a business guy, I'm sure Romney's read his Sun Tzu, so he should know better than to let his enemy choose the ground upon which the battle will be fought. But that's now where he finds himself.

The other warning sign that I see for Romney is this -- any time you find yourself in a position of having to rely on the #2 guy to give the campaign direction, that's a problem. Campaigns should be driven from the top, with the #1 guy setting the tone and pointing where the campaign goes. The Romney campaign is now backwards -- all of the direction and energy (for now, at least) are being supplied by the #2 guy, and Romney's just along for the ride. That may be great for creating a few news cycles of buzz. But presidential elections are ultimately about the guy at the top more than anything else, so it's ultimately Romney who will have to explain the course he's on and defend it as the right one -- and the image currently being presented by Romney's campaign is that he's not even the one charting it.

[OldPhiKap]

Ryan helps with fundraising from the base.

This trumps all, I think. At the end of the day, Romney can get the first check or two from most staunch Republicans but may have trouble beyond that. Ryan helps energize the checkbook -- er, I mean the base -- and help with the funding push to come.

In the primaries, Romney didn't win because he was the most popular. In close states, he won with massive financial superiority and overwhelming media saturation. He doesn't need Ryan to convince the middle that they are the best ticket -- he needs funds to convince the middle that they cannot afford four more years of Obama.

[JasonEvans]

The other warning sign that I see for Romney is this -- any time you find yourself in a position of having to rely on the #2 guy to give the campaign direction, that's a problem. Campaigns should be driven from the top, with the #1 guy setting the tone and pointing where the campaign goes. The Romney campaign is now backwards -- all of the direction and energy (for now, at least) are being supplied by the #2 guy, and Romney's just along for the ride. That may be great for creating a few news cycles of buzz. But presidential elections are ultimately about the guy at the top more than anything else, so it's ultimately Romney who will have to explain the course he's on and defend it as the right one -- and the image currently being presented by Romney's campaign is that he's not even the one charting it.

McCain - Palin had a similar situation 4 years ago, with the VP-pick attracting bigger, more excited crowds than the nominee. Now, I am not suggesting that Ryan will have many of the problems that haunted Palin soon after being picked, but the issue of the top of the ticket being less exciting than the bottom is a big deal.

-Jason

[Olympic Fan]

I think the choice of Ryan is a very compelling one because it ties Romney even closer to the controversial Ryan budget.

Actually, Romney insists that while he likes and respect Ryan, he DOESN'T support the Ryan budget:

http://www.denverpost.com/election20...5688?source=bb

I don't want to get partisan here, but you can find quite a few earier instances where he appeared to support the Ryan plan ... but when he introduced Ryan Saturday, he immediately starting distancing himself from the Ryan budget.

[Tom B.]

Actually, Romney insists that while he likes and respect Ryan, he DOESN'T support the Ryan budget:

http://www.denverpost.com/election20...5688?source=bb

I don't want to get partisan here, but you can find quite a few earier instances where he appeared to support the Ryan plan ... but when he introduced Ryan Saturday, he immediately starting distancing himself from the Ryan budget.

Which, if Romney keeps it up, will only increase the pressure on him to say specifically what he intends to do. And then we're back to square one.

[CameronBlue]

Which, if Romney keeps it up, will only increase the pressure on him to say specifically what he intends to do. And then we're back to square one.

Romney has a history--trying not to get partisan here--of changing his position with the prevailing winds of public sentiment. I think even most of his supporters would agree to that though clearly he did not invent the tactic. With Norquist on record as stating all the party needs is someone with enough digits to sign bills, it's a fair question to ask whether Romney has the will to resist what is apt to be strong party pressure to adopt the Ryan plan in toto. What Romney intends to do is apt to be exactly what the party leadership wants him to do, his past history would suggest anyway.

[OldPhiKap]

Which, if Romney keeps it up, will only increase the pressure on him to say specifically what he intends to do. And then we're back to square one.

Maybe square zero, because the next natural question is -- "Mr. Romney, what would you have paid in taxes over the last ten years under that plan?"


I still think it is a good pick for the reasons I set forth above, but it is clearly with some risk. I think Romney felt he needed to shake things up, and I think that is correct.

[Tom B.]

Maybe square zero, because the next natural question is -- "Mr. Romney, what would you have paid in taxes over the last ten years under that plan?"

Yeah -- it's already being reported that under Ryan's plan, Romney would've paid an effective tax rate of 0.82% in 2010 (instead of the 14% effective rate that he did pay). Expect to see and hear that number a lot in the coming days and weeks.