Thought Port might have a better chance due to Ohio.

I think they're saving him to run against Franken in 2014.

choice. And Portman seemed so safe and so useful (Ohio). Paw, not so much...tax problems and that inconvenient bridge collapse.

I never thought Rubio had a chance...too young and inexperienced. Christie was just too scary to lots of voters, IMHO, as much as some repubs think he's god's gift.

But after that bad week of polling, it became clear he needed someone big or he was done. So...

Thought they were trying to bury the Plan to Kill Medicare, not put the man whose name is all over it front and center. A desperate move which will backfire (God willing).

Portman to give him a shot at Ohio and because he was solid/safe.

I will be honest, while the Ryan pick is getting panned, I think that if he kept dropping in the polls after picking Portman, he would have been panned for not going bigger.

I was pretty sure he wasn't going to pick him, and I know he has some baggage, too, but Rubio probably was the pick if he was going the route of having to boost his campaign - he has even more media love than Ryan without the baggage of actually putting the republican ideas pen to paper.

i mean, really.

vice-presidential candidate on the losing ticket is of consequence to footnote writers and that's about it.

the job of digging up a VP....and of course Newt would pick himself. Many sleepless nights in the WH if ….

I thought he was smarter than that but he's obviously not. The safe pick would have been Portman. I never even considered Rubio.

Thought he was going to pick some random African American Legislature Lady from Chicago or something amazing.

Was his only chance to win.
All the current candidates sucked in their own way.

African American, General, perceived as politically moderate (and thus appealing to independents), someone who can plausibly argue to the public he was misled on the Iraq war...and someone who endorsed the President in '08. I'd also wondered if he might have tapped Linda Lingle from Hawaii.

Would make the whole 'battleship' thing look better in context.

But Collin Powell would never work for Mitt Romney, probably.

My first cut was either Portman or Ryan. Portman had an advantage in that he was bland and would not show Romney up but he also had direct ties to the Bush budget. By default it was Ryan. (I expected it to be a budget guy).

I did like the Rice suggestion (seemed plausible) but I didn't take it too seriously.

When I saw about Portman's Wikipedia page being edited I thought that was credible, but I never expected Ryan in a million years.

In June, I started hearing GOP insiders using the term "safe pick", which was understood to exclude Rubio, as well as anyone from the Bachmann/Brewer/Sheriff Joe wing of the party.

Either of them might have helped win a swing state, and Portman appeals to moderates while Rubio could make some inroads with Latino voters for future years.

Ryan is a wasted pick. They're going to lose the election and further alienate moderate and minority voters.

Few EVs in SD, but he's beloved by the party establishment, and a good attack dog.

They seem to have a way of trying to out dick each other to see who can screw the working class the most.....I like that R money

Ryan wants to screw the working class and seniors. It's like hitting the exacta for the t-baggers.

There are dozens of posts questioning the intelligence of this choice. For me it seemed kinda like a given. He is what repubs want. A young "fresh" "energetic" conservative face to put on an old ugly party. With all the extreme amounts of $ these guys are pumping into defeating the Pres, I do not doubt they are gunning to win. Rubio was a close 2nd in my mind tho. Just my 2 cents.

If he was polling ahead or doing better than he was, he probably would have picked Portman but since he was behind, I figured that he'd need to go with Ryan.

He does shore up Tea Party support, and the campaing needs their money and organizational skills.

He may tip Wisconsin into the Rmoney column (and he may not).

However, the challenge both Rmoney and Obama face is actually getting people off their couches to come vote. I don't see how Ryan motivates anyone who wasn't already voting for Rmoney anyway.

I'm also not seeing rank & file Protestant, white, southern evangelicals being too thrilled about supporting a ticket with a Mormon and a Catholic. Especially when the guy at the head of the ticket has been a wishy-washy flip flopper on every issue they hold dear. I'm not saying they vote for Obama; I'm saying they may not be as motivated to do the phone banking and volunteering they've done for other GOP campaigns.

Ryan scares/concerns seniors with his medicare and SS stands. That may hurt Romney in Florida & Arizona. We'll see.

enter Ryan. As to whether he will "excite" non-Republicans, that remains to be seen- though the pundits sure seem orgasmic about him being on the ticket. Romney's still the head of the ticket and he's still got a very big favorability gap with Obama that he's going to have to close. My hopelessly backwards fundie Republican mom doesn't like either of them, particularly after I explained Ryan's voucher plan, which she agreed would be unworkable (curiously, she believed that the vouchers were Obama's proposal until I set her straight). It sounds like my mom probably won't end up voting at all in November.

I hear that increasingly, and I think that's really the explanation for why Rmoney's poll numbers have been bad. Make no mistake, there's a lot of anger with Barack Obama, but increasingly I hear people say they don't see how Rmoneyy will be any different/better, so they are staying home.

So he really surprised me, I guess.

That was a sign of momentum. Then I read Romney's words about a VP with a "vision for the country" on Thursday, which *screamed* Ryan though it was still hard to believe.

he was going to pick his nose.

.. oh never mind!

to clear your sinuses.

great unwashed, working stiff, middle-class doesn't count "you people", the only thing I want to see rising to the occasion is the release of his tax returns.

Governor of New Mexico. Hispanic woman. Out of sheer desperation, I imagined that they would have tried to kill two birds with one stone.

.. and completely unexpected.

great minds think alike, HopeHoops!

then I figured Rubio or Ryan.

He really should have picked Portman or Pawlenty. They had a much easier image to meld with middle Americans.