I have to go halfway between Ezra and Steve M. Ezra’s main argument is that conservatives would be in a lose-lose situation if Paul Ryan is tapped as Romney’s running mate. If the ticket wins, Ryan is taken out of Congress where he is very influential as the chairman of the Budget Committee, and relegated to the largely ceremonial duties of the vice-presidency. And if the ticket loses, it will be a repudiation of the Ryan Budget and conservatism more generally. So, why would conservatives want Ryan on the ticket?
I think Ezra’s basically right about this part of his observations. But Steve M. objects strongly and convincingly to the idea that Paul Ryan would be blamed for the loss or that conservatives would turn on him.
What the right will say is that Romney/Ryan lost because the evil Satanic liberal media grotesquely distorted the nature of the Ryan budget (by, y’know, quoting accurate numbers and facts), while demonizing Paul Ryan. The right will also say that Mitt Romney was a wussy little RINO. My guess is that most right-wingers will stress the latter (no matter how far to the right Romney actually runs). But the loss will not be blamed on the budget itself. America would have embraced its small-government, pro-freedom wonderfulness if not for the lying lies of the lie-beral media!
Do you recall which member of the 2008 GOP ticket emerged as a right-wing superstar? That’s all you need to know about how blame will be assessed on the right if Romney runs with Ryan and loses.
I think that analysis is unassailable. Ryan would emerge as a more palatable conservative hero than Palin. The loss would be blamed entirely on Romney. And Ryan would be set up to play a sacrificial lamb in 2016 to an untouchable Hillary Clinton or Andrew Cuomo or even Joe Biden. The Democrats have a strong and deep bench. The Republicans have Rick Perry and Herman Cain. If Ryan becomes the running mate, and they lose, he’d be automatically catapulted to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates, along with Jeb Bush.
But Ezra’s right that a Ryan vice-presidency wouldn’t be much of a boon for conservatives, and might even constitute a short-term loss of influence.
Ryan is the Kochs’ man to inject John Bircherist Randianism with pretty face into the national bloodstream. The used him to take over the Republican part by getting the entire House GOP caucus to back Ryan’s dagger against the New Deal.
They are grooming him to be the Dick Cheney who will whip congress in line to deliver the Koch agenda to a Pres. Romney’s desk for signature.
The know that Romney has zero interest in legislation except the tax roll back that would allow him to repatriate his money’s stashed abroad and to erase the estate tax deadline that is looming over his $100 million IRA so he can pass that to his children ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/08/1118102/-Mitt-s-100M-IRA-and-Why-He-Wants-to-be-President ). Romney is like the robber who sets up a bank so he can get full access to money for theft. He needs the presidency for purely selfish reasons. That’s why he is going scorched earth to get it by hook or crook. He’ll give Koch, Adelson and any “investor” in his campaign what they want. And through Ryan, Koch get the domestic agenda they want fast-tracked to Romney’s desk.
The don’t think that they will lose this election. They will steal it, kill & maim for it. These people are hellbent on dismantling this commonweal cuz they see this as their only opportunity.
Largely ceremonial duties as VP? Really? Like Cheney? Here we’ve all been yakking about what a straw in the wind Romney is, how he even makes W seem like he has character. And yet an aggressive fanatic with the big bucks and lobbyists behind him is going to be just an ornament in an administration “led” by a jellyfish? I don’t see any reason to think that would happen. Ryan would make Cheney look like the ornament.
I think Steve is right about Ryan’s future if he’s part of a losing ticket. Palin was not destroyed because of her ideology, but because she’s undeniably stupid and lazy. Ryan is certainly not lazy and does not come off as stupid unless you follow his assertions much more closely than the average voter will. OTOH, by 2016 Obama’s record should have come into its own and derailed the far right agenda, so Ryan could by then be nothing at all.
You make a good point about Cheney but let’s get real for a moment.
Dick Cheney ran the Pentagon during a war. He had every kind of connection you could possible need to wield power behind the scenes. He had served as chief of staff to the president in the Ford administration. He knew everything. Bush knew virtually nothing.
Mitt Romney has run a company, he has run the Olympics. He’ll be a little out of his depth in the White House, but no more so than Obama was at the beginning.
What has Paul Ryan even done? He can’t tell Romney what to do or even how to do it. At best, he’d be a good liaison to the House Republicans.
You way overrate Romney. Being a CEO has nothing to do with capability, especially when you were born a millionaire. I thought we learned that for once and for all with Bush. By all accounts Romney was a lousy, weak governor and a figurehead re the Olympics. Comparing him to Obama is ludicrous. Obama is smart and a born politician, and is driven to make changes. Romney is famously a flipflopper not because he changes his mind but because he has no real interest in policy, so he’ll say and do anything in pursuit of money and power. He doesn’t want to be president in order to achieve some particular agenda — he just wants to be president, period. It’s his destiny, it was prophesied, he’s entitled to it.
Like Bush, he’s way, way out of his depth, ready for a strong ideologue who is a god to the new Republican base to tell him what to do. Ryan doesn’t need to know the maze of government. He just needs the fealty of the likes of the Koches, the House leadership, Norquist and the rest of the DeLay gang, and the thousands of lobbyists and power peddlers who constitute the rightwing shadow government. It will be Romney, not Ryan, who will be the ornament in a GOP administration. And Romney won’t even mind.
If Romney is no Obama, and I agree, Ryan is really no Cheney.
Not if the R’s take the Senate and /or keep the House. The Senate is not looking good. http://www.electionprojection.com/2012elections/senate12.php
I’d much rather quote Nate Silver, but I don’t see him doing much on the Senate.
Isn’t this always the conclusion that is reached by the far right?
Conservatism as a philosophy is inerrant. The only time it will appear to fail will be because of poor execution or a lack of commitment to zealously hold fast to the belief in it’s inerrancy.
The policies don’t fail the people, the people always fail the policies. It’s just like a fundamentalist religion.
By picking Romney, the Republicans have insured that the inmates will be running the asylum for the next 4 years at the least. This is true even if he wins, because they will demand their pound of flesh.
If he loses, which is looking more and more likely, it doesn’t matter who the VP candidate is. The whole excuse will be because he was not conservative enough, and this is amplified with the whole RomneyCare defense that came out yesterday.
The moneyed masters can’t handle the monster they unleashed. In 2016 there is no way even a Jeb Bush could win the nomination. The super crazies will work to make sure that there are only one or two of their ilk running so the vote won’t get divided up like it did this time.
Romney only won because the crazy vote was split between so many crazies. They won’t allow that to happen next time. Even Ryan wouldn’t satisfy them.
The crazies squandered all their time waiting for Sarah and forgot the lessons of 2010. The moneyed masters forgot the lesson of 1964.
I think Ryan would satisfy them very well.
In 2016, Biden will be 74 years old and Hillary will be 69. If that’s evidence of the deep bench of Democrats, they are in trouble. If one must highlight a NY pol, why not Gillibrand — at least she has charisma.
Because Cuomo is going to run and she is not.
So was his daddy going to run many moons ago. And since when did a desire to run for POTUS be the sole criteria for a thumbs up from the rank and file in either party? Hey, but don’t let me interfere with Democrats preference for charisma challenged, DLC type POTUS candidates.
Schweitzer is looking better and better. And whatever happened to Wesley Clark?
Shiny four stars has found a new career hosting the latest disgusting unreality show. His credentials for that job far exceed the zero creds he had for POTUS — and taped TV shows can even inject charisma into the charmless.
Schweitzer always looks good in part because he’s not craven enough to have “run for POTUS” on his “to do list.”
Didn’t say I liked him, but a lot of people did. There must be an alternative to two geriatrics and Andrew Cuomo.
No age discrimination there, I’m 67. There MUST be someone in my daughter’s generation who is not DLC.
Those that liked the General had some half-backed, ill-informed, notion that he could be the DEM Ike. They wouldn’t even acknowledge that Ike had commanded in a popular war and his name was well known long before 1952. whereas, Clark’s command was in a war that had barely been acknowledged, not understood, and almost nobody had heard of him.
There are more non-DLC DEM pols than there are socially and economically rational Republicans that are now extinct at the federal level, but the DEM progressives have so little power that they are easily dismissed. The most talented that seems not to have bowed to the neo-liberals is Sherrod Brown.
I have always had hopes for Schweitzer. I like him.
I didn’t endorse any of them. I just pointed out that the Dems have a heavyweight roster of candidates. There’s more below the three I mentioned. There’s Gov. O’Malley and Sen. Warner of Virginia, to give two more example of people who can raise the kind of money and have the kind of experience to make a serious run for the nomination.
Why not a Cuomo/Warner or Warner/Cuomo ticket? Like a kinder/gentler version of a Romney/Ryan ticket.
Then there’s Rahm and the great destroyer of public education, Arne Duncan.
What a shame the choices don’t go beyond degree of misery for most people and those miserians are leading the world to ever more misery with each election cycle.
Warner wasn’t half bad — for Virginia. I dunno. I can’t recommend ANYONE from Illinois. Feingold lost his seat and had a reputation for being uncooperative with peers, i.e. lots of enemies, and a boss that won’t listen to alternatives isn’t a very good leader. Sanders isn’t a Democrat and is old too. There are liberal young people in Congress but they don’t have the depth of experience. The bench ISN’T deep, at least not for Liberals.
Obama is the most liberal nominee we’ve had since Dukakis. And we haven’t had a liberal (running as a liberal) with a plausible chance at the nomination since Dukakis. We just had phony populists like John Edwards and Al Gore.
Probably the only liberal who could conceivably make a serious run is Sherrod Brown, but I wouldn’t give him a chance in hell of raising the money he’d need.
We can agree that Sherrod Brown is a solid liberal (so far) and could make a serious run for the Presidency. He’s also demonstrating that a good candidate can overcome a large financial disadvantage.
We haven’t had a liberal running as a liberal since McGovern. Gore at least had the experience of being raised by two New Deal Democrats which put him a lot closer to American liberalism than any of the others you’ve listed, but not much evidence than much of any of that wore off on him which is more than could be said for Evan Bayh.
I’ve wondered for many years whether Marvella made an oopsie and dropped poor Evan on his head when he was a baby.
Warner is a Republican, center-right, a DINO. He couldn’t run as a REpublican first time out. Very hard to get along with. However, I vote for him because, well, it’s Virginia, and he can win. Better than any alternatives in Republican Party.
That was my point.
This does hint at the attacks against Romney when he loses the WH to Obama. Those that stand near the ticket bear a real chance of seeing a screed from Coulter across the board that we haven’t even imagined so far.
Course that’s probably only a little bit worse than what the factions of the GOP will do to Romney and his followers if he wins. Bears a resemblence to the man who stole the tank in San Diego and drove it up, over and around town.
Just as you say, if Ryan is Romney’s wingman and they lose them Ryan is in front for the top GOP spot in 2016.
That prospect fills me with more dread than hope.
It’s too much like setting up Hitler to run in 1932 because you’re pretty sure the Social Democrats can beat him if the Communists don’t run separately and split the left.
Whoops.
Besides, Ryan is so far right he makes Goldwater and Reagan both look like Rockefeller Republicans.
Him getting the top spot is just one more terrible step upward in the long rise of the radical right.
You’ll never see me cheer for it.