DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Romney To Announce VP Saturday @ 8:45 AM

Kind of a strange time to make such a big announcement.

I think that it's going to be Ryan. I think that he'd be a great pick too.

Romney to announce running mate Saturday morning in Virginia | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/...ng-in-virginia/

Mitt Romney will announce his running mate at 9 a.m. ET Saturday in Norfolk, Va., Fox News confirms.

Romney will launch his "The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class" bus tour after announcing his choice for the Vice Presidential candidate, according to an official press release from the Romney campaign.

Fox News' Carl Cameron contributed to this report.

Ryan is a great pick for him. He'll probably still lose, but Ryan is his best bet.

I think the timing is pretty good.

It gives ample time for the news shows and newspapers to go to work so they can dominate all the Sunday News...Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, etc.

Sunday is your big news day. That's when you want your headlines.

You want it buried?? Release it on Friday for Saturday coverage.

Ryan will excite the "base" and alienate the undecideds when the media begins their tear down of Ryan as a cold heartless Tea Partier who wants to kick seniors to the curb.

I will make no bones about it. I think Obama is a joke and a prime example of those undecideds who think "rockstar" not statesman as they catapulted him into the White House. And Mitt is your typical blowhard who believes in absolutely nothing.

The only one on this ticket who has values, beliefs, and fights for them--right or wrong is Ryan.

Despite that I still have a hard time voting for Mitt. (no way in hell I vote Obama--I'll vote for that guy McMillan from the Rent Is Too D*** High party before I vote Obama. I am still warm to Gary Johnson even that's a "throw away" vote.

I like the selection. It's too bad that Romney is on the ticket.

There are a couple of reasons that I think Romney wins with this selection.

1. Ryan is conservative, all the way around, and will draw in some of the conservative votes. Not unlike what Sarah Palin did to energize the McCain ticket. Unlike Sarah Palin, Ryan is a national media veteran who will be ready for the media lambasting that will come. He has the same core principles as Sarah Palin.

2. Ryan will eat Obama's lunch on fiscal and budgetary issues. He'll be the point man on these. He actually proposed a budget that passed through the House. That's more than Obama can say. During Obama's entire presidency, there has NEVER been a budget passed and they have been unanimously rejected.

(Defeated 99-0 in the Senate)

(Defeated 414-0 in the House)

3. Who is more intellectually ready to be president, Joe Biden or Paul Ryan? But that's unfair. Joe Biden would lose intellectually to a ham sandwich or a box of rocks.

4. Romney needed an attack dog that was willing and capable to go after Obama. He's got one in Ryan. Ryan's choice is bad for Democrats entirely. Ryan will be a good attack dog against them as well.

Will it be enough to get me to vote for Romney? I don't know. I do know that I won't vote for Obama even with a loaded gun to my head.

We'll see if Romney (or Ryan) can convince me to vote for them in November. I like Ryan a lot and we'll have to see if I can be convinced to cast a vote for Romney in November.

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We'll see if Romney (or Ryan) can convince me to vote for them in November. I like Ryan a lot and we'll have to see if I can be convinced to cast a vote for Romney in November.

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I agree. I'm not really a Mitt fan.

But I do like Paul Ryan. Guys I like are Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindel

Unfortunately, none of them ran.


But, I'd never vote for BO again. That was a big mistake, definitely learned the lesson on that one. Just because you think you might want to drink a beer with a guy, doesn't mean that he's someone you vote in as president.

So yeah, Romney it is I guess. I want my vote to count (so I won't go third party), and Obama's spending terrifies me. People are going to lose faith in our currency and we're going to be screwed. Luckily, the EU has problems too

Although, hopefully the new job that i'm hoping to get sets me up so that I don't have to worry much about how our economy effects me. But until then, i'm nervous as heck

I like the choice. Ryan sounds like he has his head on straight.

excellent choice!

i'm closer to voting for romney today than I was yesterday because of the VP pick. that's all you can ask for in such a selection.

I will say that I really, really like Ryan as a governing choice. I think that he is the single best option there was in either party to help run this country.

The one good thing is that if Romney can't win this time around, Ryan will immediately jump to the top of the list for the next election.

A Paul Ryan/Mike Kelly ticket might get me to actually contribute money to their campaign. Maybe down the road it might be a reality.

If Romney doesn't win this time, you might not recognize this country by "next" time.

I think of the "Final 4" VP candidates (Portman, Rubio, Ryan, Jindal), Ryan was the 3rd best choice. I exclude Chris Christie from this list because he was never a real candidate IMO. If he wanted to leave the governor's seat, he would've done it for a very real shot at the GOP nomination. Furthermore, a ticket with 2 New England governors is too unbalanced for a national race.

I think the issue with Ryan is the only people he excites are the GOP base (who in all likelihood would've voted for Romney anyway since - in their eyes - he's better than Obama). I think this selection will actually lose Romney Florida and may even lose him the election since I don't think Ryan will bring in many independent voters for Romney. The next 2 months will be filled with anti-Ryan ads railing him on his budget plan that touches 2 "sacred cows" for the elderly in Social Security and Medicare.

On the other hand, Rubio would've most likely given Romney Florida and brought out a large number of Hispanics to the polls. Portman - like Joe Lieberman before him in 2000/04 - was the moderate, bland pick that would've brought a lot to the ticket in terms of things Romney needs on paper but wouldn't have really excited people. I still think he would've been a solid choice.

Jindal would've been a bad choice since he brings essentially nothing to the ticket Romney needs that he can't get from the other candidates.

J/c

Every time I see the name Paul Ryan, I think of someone completely different than the politician. I have a close cousin named Paul Ryan...that's who I see. Funny to picture him and hear VP candidate now. Well, funny to me. LOL!

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The one good thing is that if Romney can't win this time around, Ryan will immediately jump to the top of the list for the next election.

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Ok, I'm torn now. I'm not a Romney fan, but I do like Ryan... I don't see this country being in much different shape whether it's Obama or Romney running it (into the ground) for the next 4 years.... And I don't want to see Ryan slip into the abyss known as the VP slot.... if Romney were to win, then Ryan is the VP, 4 years from now they would likely run again and, my guess is, Romney would lose... then Ryan would have to wait 4 MORE YEARS to run for President...... I really could never bring myself to vote for Obama but now I'm almost hoping that he wins so Ryan can run in 4 years at the head of the ticket against a non-incumbent....

I would just really like a ticket that I don't have to hold my nose to vote for.....

Nate Silver on the Ryan Choice (too many graphs to copy over):

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/

j/c Listening to Ryan I am initially impressed.

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Will it be enough to get me to vote for Romney? I don't know. I do know that I won't vote for Obama even with a loaded gun to my head.

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I respect anybodys right to vote for who they want, but if you truly want President Obama out of office, you best vote for Romney

A non vote for Romney is about a half a vote for the President. His voters are pretty dim and don't consider all the options.

Think about that long and hard before you vote for a 3rd party and then be ticked off later in the evening when The President gets the nod with 45% of the vote.

That 45% does as they are told.

And really that's it in a nutshell. As much as I like Gary Johnson it would only give me the satisfaction of voting for someone I like rather than ensuring someone I REALLY don't like get back in office.

I like Ryan in the fact that the man has the stones to stand up and say "tough times call for tough action" and produce a budget and solutions that touch upon the third rail that most politics wouldn't even dare talk about much less make a proposition--that being SS, Medicare, Medicaid but they will ask the rich to pay more of their "fair share."

I don't like Mitt one iota but Ryan makes him a bit more palatable. He's not the solution but he's the better option.

don't know a thing about him.. gotta research...

Well he's no Joe Biden, he actually has a cognitive thought process.

Great pick. Locked up my vote.

The Koch Brother's ticket...

Across the political spectrum, even among many liberals who otherwise are rubbing their hands with glee over Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate, pundits and politicians are praising Romney’s move as a “courageous” and “bold” pick. And plenty of people (fewer on the liberal side, though still a great number of moderates) are lauding Ryan himself as ”courageous”. On the surface, such a take is understandable: Ryan’s claim to fame — his “Path to Prosperity” budget — was a political loser when introduced last spring. But a closer look reveals that these claims are bunk: Picking Ryan is essentially a safe sop to the conservative wing of the party, and Ryan himself is not so courageous.

First, Romney’s choice: The past few weeks have made clear that the race is slipping away from him, as President Obama’s lead has widened in state and national polls and the economic outlook has brightened slightly. The right has sensed this — see talk show host Laura Ingraham, among others — and conservatives are convinced that Romney is losing because he’s not assertive or conservative enough. So I agree with the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber when he writes this:

Ryan is the way Romney and his aides escape blame for their now-likely defeat — blame which would have vicious and unrelenting — and pin it in on conservatives instead. With only minor historical revisions, they will be able to tell a story about how Romney was keeping the race close through early August, at which point the party’s conservative darling joined the ticket and sent the poll numbers into steady decline.
If moderates such as Condoleezza Rice (pro-abortion rights) and Chris Christie (pro-gun control and moderate on immigration) were out of the question, Ryan was easy to choose ahead of the other possibilities: He has no Bush administration history, unlike Rob Portman, no raft of mini-scandals-in-waiting, like Marco Rubio, and some actual charisma, unlike Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty. Picking a reliable conservative was much safer for Romney than daring the right to abandon him and/or heap all the blame on him for losing in November. By process of elimination, Ryan was the best — and the safest — of the bunch.

As for Ryan himself, to begin with, what policies turned Clinton-era surpluses into Bush-era deficits? In large part, two tax cuts, two wars and a massive prescription drug benefit, and Ryan voted for all of them. (He also voted for TARP, by the way; his fiscal rectitude only included actually voting against massive expenditures once President Obama took office.) His “serious” debt-reduction plan doesn’t balance the budget until 2040. By contrast, the House Progressive Caucus budget, whatever else you think of it, balances the budget within a decade.(Note: In both cases, those are the budgets’ authors’ projections; your math may vary.) Furthermore, no doubt in fear of the senior vote, Ryan dropped the Social Security privatization aspect from his debt plan and now only guts Medicare for people 55 and younger. Finally, Ryan refuses to touch defense spending, retains tax breaks for oil companies that don’t need them, zeroes out the capital gains tax and finds his savings in programs by shredding the already hole-ridden safety net. For a Republican, this is smart politics. But how exactly is it “courageous” or “serious” to protect the interests to some of the most powerful (and wealthiest) lobbies in Washington — Wall Street, oil companies and the defense industry — while heaping painful cuts on the poor? No, the idea that Ryan or Romney’s nomination of him as his vice president is courageous is simply wrong.

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My kind of guy!

Not a smart choice, IMO. Picking someone who has very hard core Conservative appeal will only make the extreme right-wingers excited.

What Romney missed here is that MOST of this country's voters are middle-ground (despite the extreme left or right views you see and hear on national Media outlets and things like...I dunno...message boards) who can would rather have some variation of compromise for the greater good rather than strictly walking the "company line". Picking someone more neutral would appeal to those who are just that. Someone like Condy Rice (as an example) would have been a real game changer with much broader appeal to those middle-ground voters.

The election is not about trying to sway to your most hard core demographic. Romney is going to get those votes regardless. It's about appealing to a broader base and he's completely missed this concept. This is going to cost him the election.

I don't know. I happen to think most of the voters are conservative.

I don't know about that. Mickey Mouse, dead people, the folks who registered multiple times and those busloads of ne'er do wells all seemed to vote dem.

I don't mean "party affiliation"..........I'm talking conservatives.

I happen to feel there is a majority of conservative voters. Call it a silent majority if you want. That's just how I feel.

I also feel this silent majority is starting to surge..........maybe I just hope so.......

But, anyone with common sense can see that the status quo just isn't cutting it. Our gov't. spending is the problem. It's not taxes - it's spending.

I'll agree with you in that I think there are more fiscal conservatives, but I also think there are more social liberals.

JMHO