They've been making the case for Ryan all week. Rmoney folded to appease fox news.

approved (as well as country club GOP like you note).

However, pleasing the GOP base does not win him the independents or anyone else who does not want Medicare to be a voucher/coupon system.

Rmoney is just a puppet in this game, he just wants the title. The powers that be need a watchdog. Ryan is the guy that is gonna keep Rmoney on point.

even generous.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=998601

I suspect that is the goal of the one percent who have a hand in both parties.

This month's Vanity Fair has a feature article about him - he controls the party.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/09/karl-rove-gop-craig-unger

that this is the worst possible pick for us. If he went for Jindal or Rubio, it would be seen as naked pandering to either Asians or Latinos, and if it were Portman or Pawlenty it would not motivate the Rethug base.

All those who would celebrate Ryan as a pick need to remember that saying about being careful what you wish for. If the economy continues to suffer (rich Repukes will guarantee that it does) or if some international crisis breaks out that can be pinned on the Obama Administration (even if Hillary's fingerprints are all over it), there's a reasonable chance that Romney could be elected even with Sarah Palin as his VP. And if that slot is held by Ryan, then Mittens will claim to have a mandate to effectuate the Ryan plan, because he has no credible one of his own.

As things stand, we're going to lose some ground in the Senate, no matter what the economy looks like on Election Day. If this is a rout of the House and the Senate like we saw in 1980 or 1994, then we may see enough really scared Democratic Senators from purple states who may decide to go along with a Romney-Ryan budget, as long as they can save some benefit for their home states.

There are so few undecideds left the only territory is new voters, ie young people.

Younger people have much less faith that Social Security and Medicare are going to be there for them, so they think they have less to lose.

It would be a net loss overall of any independent vote.

is convince the existing seniors and the soon-to-be seniors that they won't be affected, it's just those money grubbing Gen X'ers and millennials (who are just waiting for you to die for your money, wink-wink) who will be affected.

Rethugs have always played a good game of divide and conquer.

I wonder if their pollsters found this was the group most vulnerable to their arguments.

Unless they're hard core righties, who care nothing about women's right to choose, and the prospect of a war in Iran, there is no way in hell they'd go to Romney because he has someone that isn't 60 on the ticket.

Young voters are not stupid. If they're going for cool.. they'll go for Obama.

Most of them take choice as a matter of bedrock faith that it will always be there, although perhaps tinkered with at the edges. Neither Romney nor Ryan is as much of an idiot on contraception as Sick Rantorum was, although both would support the right of the religious-owned organizations to not cover birth control. Still, that's an issue that deals solely with people already advancing a religious organization's views, so they think it won't affect them.

And after the unnecessary prolongation of the war in Iraq and the continuation of our bleeding both soldiers and money in Afghanistan, the President's got little credibility in that area. Everyone's figured that there would never be a ground war with Iran, only destruction of their nuke facilities, and mopping up any resistance we get from that.

I've seen this movie before, it was in 1968. Nixon managed to win even with Wallace bleeding off the worst of the racist vote.

And if you ask me he is unkept. Someone should introduce him to a razor.

Ryan is the last person I want Romney to pick for the reasons you site, and that I don't want that horrible creep to get national attention as a VP choice.

I'm happy he chose him. It was a stupid move. Romney HAD the hard core right wing sewn up, the tea baggers, the Koch Bros, anti tax nuts. He had a good start with seniors.

So what does he do? He chooses a guy that is booed by seniors at a town hall meeting. Hated by seniors. Makes his staff read Ann Raynd, and is basically a tea bagger without the pot belly and missing teeth.

He should have chosen someone likable and safe.

Well okay, I didn't consider how he was that reviled by seniors. I just don't like him personally and am not looking forward to seeing and hearing him all over the media for the next three months.

Either Romney wins, and he gets to claim that picking Ryan gave him a mandate to take a meat cleaver to the budget, or Obama wins, and Ryan becomes the immediate front-runner for the year where Obama's name isn't on the ballot. If the economy hasn't pulled out of recession-depression by then, you can automatically call the 2016 GOP nominee "Mr. President".

and praying that that doesn't happen.

no one is fooled except for the morAns.

Actually they're in a huge snit. They don't like him and were insisting unless they got Ryan as a VP they weren't voting for a president at all. They were threatening to skip it on the ticket all together.

Local rumor, and I totally ignored it. Hell, it came from self proclaimed Baggers straight to my ears. They're nuts. I never believe a thing they say. Now, I'm wondering if there wasn't a shred of truth to it. Was his campaign honestly this worried they were going to lose the nutty fringe they originally created?

Announcing on a Saturday no less! They know they're gonna tick off any vaguely moderate left in their party and want to have the Sunday political talk shows to use as a buffer!

Silly me!

The base hated McCain... Palin. The base hates Romney... Ryan.

What people are calling Romney's base, the ultraconservative and out and out lunatics, seem to despise him. Maybe Ryan can bring some of them out to vote for Mitt, but I have my doubts.

Or his was the name they pulled out of the hat.