This won’t happen, Tim Tebow doesn’t love me enough:
And after seeing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan trade compliments, banter about the Boy Scouts and take turns talking taxes and debt, these three Wisconsin Republican voters arrived at the same conclusion: This could be the ticket.
A couple of Medicare-destroying himbos bantering about Boy Scouts on the campaign trail. What could possibly go wrong?
Hill Dweller
Maddow showed the clip of Romney, after slobbering all over Ryan last night, assuring the crowd that he wouldn’t replace his wife, Ann.
Awkward is Rombot’s default setting.
Trinity
I shall offer a tribute of marinara up to the great FSM this evening.
We should be so lucky!
AA+ Bonds
Erskine Bowles would come in his pants, and yes he has actually said that he thinks Paul Ryan is presidential material
beergoggles
In better news, one more villain close to eating dirt.
I’m just bitter after Prop 5 in Alaska.
Anya
@Hill Dweller: OH, God! That guy is so awkward. I think he’s programmers need to perform regular updates.
MattF
Oh, it could happen. Ryan’s not fat or brown and he gets starbursts from the serious set as well as from wingers.
amk
@Hill Dweller: Just when ann called him non-stiff when unzipped… Oh, wait….
AA+ Bonds
@Hill Dweller:
Whoa, that sort of parapraxis means the erotic attraction is probably genuine
Maybe Romney is one of THOSE Wall Streeters . . . a friend of a friend has “worked” his way up by having a good nose for those people
AA+ Bonds
Paul Ryan is exactly what he needs, a radical right-winger who gets his dick sucked by the Village and Democratic cat-fooders
Paul Ryan would in fact be my top guess for fascist dictator of the United States c. 2020 if I were told that position would exist then
andy
Job Killer and Granny Starver- together AT LAST.
If they got costumes and dressed their henchmen in coordinated outfits they could be as big as The Monarch if they work at it.
James Gary
“I don’t understand what they mean/And I could really give a fuck.”
DougJ: Your lyric-reference post titles have been very good in recent days. Kudos.
Anya
@AA+ Bonds: Isn’t Erskine Bowles a democrat?
BGinCHI
Finally, a PAVEMENT title!!
win.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Oh please oh please oh please oh please. FSM, make it so.
And besides, I think Romney and Ryan have interchangeable parts, so it would save on the routine maintenance costs.
AA+ Bonds
@Anya:
Well! Mercy me I do believe he is! I believe he was even the Democrat that Obama appointed to co-chair the Catfood Commission
handsmile
Never figured you to be a Pavement fan, Doug-of-many-nyms. More a kind of “Gold Soundz” sort of guy.
PeakVT
@Anya: That’s what he calls himself.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
They even sort of look alike. We could call them RomBot and SpareBot.
AA+ Bonds
What Erskine Bowles actually is, is a belly-crawling Democratic lizard who did his best to trash the UNC system after somehow, astoundingly, making the NC Democratic Party appear even more crony-tastic than before as they continued to run his anti-charismatic ass for federal office
People are actually trying to get him to run for governor down there is what I hear although I highly doubt they’ll succeed
S. cerevisiae
Ryan may be the perfect sacrifice this election cycle, he is young enough to bounce back from an electoral defeat that the wingnuts will blame on Romney. Yeah, wheels are turning at GOP HQ.
Anya
@AA+ Bonds: I bet, the President would put that commission at the top of his regrets.
@PeakVT: I see. He’s a Faux News Democrat.
MattF
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Funny, that… It makes psychological sense for Romney to favor someone who looks like Romney.
the fugitive uterus
please please please please please please!
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
Ryan was that guy that Obama took to school at that GOP retreat a couple of years ago, and started off by calling Ryan’s family beautiful and gave Ryan a sad. Moar of all that plz.
Martin
Yeah, I think Ryan is on the short list too. His ace-in-the-hole is that nobody sees him as a social conservative, yet is is a raging one. The temptation will be to hide that from the electorate and trust that the base will remember the fact.
The GOP has many impossibly fine lines to walk here.
Ripley
Ah, yes… the Bold and the Bendable.
AA+ Bonds
The one time I saw Erskine Bowles in person he shifted weirdly back and forth from one hip to another while talking to people and I am sorry if he has some sort of joint problem but it was strange, it was like I was hearing his voice as he spun around a centrifuge, his needly whiny little voice with a consciously pronounced Upper South accent that he probably learned at Jim Hunt’s knee
Hill Dweller
Charlie Pierce, from today’s post, describing Willard:
Loneoak
At least Ryan would have less power over the budget as the Veep than he does now.
I’m wagering this is a 50/50 proposition. There aren’t many other plausible options, especially if Rubio is really genuine in his insistent refusals of the prospect.
Comrade Dread
I think Mr. Ryan will find himself persona non grata just as soon as The ROM-N3Y bot’s coders are convinced he’s far enough along that they can safely recode his political subroutines from “base appealing bat**** lunacy” back to “faux reasonable moderate” without worrying about further surges of Santorum.
Not to say that the ROM-N3Y bot doesn’t fully support the elimination of health care and aid to the elderly and poorer humans that invest the planet, as it coincides nicely with his primary goal of destroying his human creators and killing all humans, but that message failed to win anyone in the focus group outside of libertarians and robophiles, of which there was a surprising overlap.
Loneoak
@Martin:
Wait, whut? A libertarian as a closet social conservative?! Perish the thought.
PeakVT
Why would Romney want Ryan as Veep? The gay Tory Catholic vote isn’t that significant.
AA+ Bonds
@Anya:
Not exactly; Bowles is a North Carolina Democrat which is akin to a Louisiana Democrat
To put in context, when the Democrats lost majorities in both houses of the N.C. state legislature in 2010, it was the first time that had happened since 1870
They are a different breed entirely than the Doug Schoen/Tammy Bruce types, far less faux-populist, far more openly elitist; sort of semi-evolved Dixiecrat types who are unsettled by two-party systems since they never really had to deal with them in the infancy of their careers
(This is one reason why John Edwards seemed so confident that none of that shit about him would ever come out if he made it into the VP or attorney general slot; we all thought he was shady as shit down in NC by default)
MattF
I suppose that since Dick Cheney has a new heart (too bad about the old one), he’s a candidate too.
Martin
@Loneoak: Actually, if Romney is polling poorly going into May/June the options open up. When you’re ahead, your options are highly constrained, because you don’t want to fuck up a good thing. When you’re behind, you have to take risks, so more options open up.
So there are more people the candidate is willing to consider but convincing someone to jump on the fail train is vastly harder. And that’s going to be Romney’s real problem. Who’s willing to commit PR suicide here? I think purely from a betting position, I’d put my money on someone who’s quite downticket and really has nothing to lose by taking a big step up (like Palin did) or a GOP congressman from an unwaveringly blue state who has limited prospects at the Senate or Governor and therefore lacks stepping stones toward a more successful run. I don’t think I’d put Ryan in those camps, so while he’s probably really attractive to Romney, Ryans best play here is to run his name up as the inevitable VP candidate and then turn the offer down and hope that carries him into the next-in-line slot for President in 2016.
jl
Looks like another good jobs report coming up soon, from what I saw in the bus news this morning. Looks like another nail in the GOP coffin.
I will hope that gummint jobs report turns out as good as early signs indicate.
And I will feel a little sad (on principle), but not very sad or even moderately sad, that the GOP decided to campaign for the last four years on hate and division, misdirection, bad faith gimmicky medicine show sales pitches and BS, rather than substance.
Edit: If Mitt chooses Ryan as VP, the I humbly suggest that Obama choose Krugman as VP. Krugman might accept, since he would not need to have any administrative responsibilities (which Kthug has made clear is a deal breaker for any job offer), or any responsibilities at all, strictly speaking. Krazy Train Joe Biden could go to Secretary of State, which he will love.
MikeJ
@Martin: Actually I think that among the republicans there will be a fair number of their better candidates who will be willing to take one for the team in exchange for being next in line.
As long as Romney looks like a lost cause anyway, nobody can blame the veep selection for losing it. I think the people that run the party know that, and that opens the slot for all of the “serious” candidates that didn’t run for president this time.
AA+ Bonds
I suppose I should not be talking about why you should hate Erskine Bowles when the topic of the thread is hating Paul Ryan; just know that Erskine Bowles is evidence of why Paul Ryan’s career may be on an upward arc like an exponential function of total bullshit
EconWatcher
Joe Biden would eat his lunch in a debate. Biden had to tread delicately with Palin; he knew any meanness could backfire. With Ryan, Joe could take the gloves off and make him cry in front of a live national audience.
Yevgraf
@Comrade Dread:
So you’re saying that Rmoney is V-GER, wiping out the carbon units.
nellcote
Rmoney and his mini-money can share hair product and save on campaign funds.
AA+ Bonds
@Martin:
I think 2008 is going to make Romney’s campaign scared as hell of “opening up” the VP choice, especially given that pretty much everyone from McCain 2008 will be either working for Romney or working for a PAC to elect Romney
If they’re smart they have a hard and fast Top 3 already by this point and they’ll only go to 2 or 3 if the one(s) above that rank get caught with a 14-year-old “boyfriend”
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Loneoak:
US Senate. Tiebreaker.
Clime Acts
All of you who are mocking the apparently emerging Romney/Ryan ticket as a good thing for Dems had better think again: For one thing, they look terrific together. And in the empty-headed world of American electoral politics that is going to go a very long way toward putting them in the White House.
People, this country allowed GWB to ascend the throne, not once, but twice. What delusion convinces you that Romney won’t succeed? He is not NEARLY as retarded as the simple Bush boy.
And Ryan, as evil as his plans may be, is well spoken and hot.
Martin
@PeakVT: Ryan would validate Romney with the two groups he’s struggling to get – social conservatives and teatards. Credit to Ryan here – he’s done a very good job of positioning himself among the key GOP demographics. Not many people think of him as a culture warrior – that’s the sort of image best communicated at the donut plate after church – but rather as the guy carrying the free-market, small government torch for the GOP.
And Ryan doesn’t sound like an idiot when he speaks. He’s a decent campaigner. Better than Romney at least, but not as good as either Obama or Biden, IMO. He’s pretty quick on his feet with his talking points and bullshitting his way through his stupid ideas, and not prone to self-damaging gaffes (unlike Biden’s which are more gaffes of decorum). But that’s mostly against the sunday show hosts who don’t exactly wield a sharp knife and where the roundtables have lots of deference and shit. I think Obama/Biden will carve him up like a sunday ham.
Martin
@MikeJ: Maybe. I think there’s a difference between a close loss and getting your ass handed to you, though. Maybe they truly think this will be close, but there’s serious risk of them getting pasted. There’s a degree of humiliation that’s hard to shake off.
AA+ Bonds
@EconWatcher:
Biden would likely destroy any contender in a debate, so the trick is to find some creepy dreamboat like Ryan with enough goodwill among the Villagers that it will be declared a tie
I say this as someone who is no real fan of Biden but he is a monster on the attack and all his problems come from going too far, which is never really a problem in the VP debate
But the press doesn’t like Biden as much as they like Ryan
Felinious Wench
Dog on Roof runs with Dog Food. Man on Dog denied.
jl
@EconWatcher: Biden versus Ryan would be fun to watch. The Biden gaffes might work for Biden if his opponent were Ryan.
Anyone who can count, and not afraid of calling BS to the BSers face would do very well against Ryan.
Good thing about Biden in this kind of match up is that he has the self confidence needed to call out nonsense, with a smile and a wise crack (and, of course, a Bidengaffe or two thrown in for laffs).
AA+ Bonds
@Clime Acts:
^ a good post
Democrats who think Paul Ryan is a bad choice are living in a dream world; people who completely disagree with him on Medicare will vote for him if they are told to do so by media figures who agree with him on Medicare
Seanly
@EconWatcher:
WIN! I would love to see that especially since Ryan has doubled down on his horrid budget and Biden has been playing the populist card more than Obama.
Roger Moore
@jl:
Expect the social conservative noise machine to get even louder.
Martin
@AA+ Bonds:
I disagree. Palin was most risky because she didn’t have a long track record. Obama was similarly risky, FWIW, but the primary campaign pretty much settled that. But there are lots of downticket politicians that have long enough track records to know generally how they’ll fare. We tend to overlook them because they aren’t prominent enough for us to really give a shit unless we live in their district, etc. but there really are a decent number of fairly safe governor, congressmen, and senator choices out there.
AA+ Bonds
People are not going to remember the details of the Ryan budget by the convention unless the media decides that it is a story; people are most likely instead going to hear about how Even Many Democrats And Liberal Columnists Like Paul Ryan
EconWatcher
@jl:
Biden is not only a fighter, he has a genuine connection with those white blue-collar folks we keep hearing are lost to the Dems. I think having Ryan on the ticket, and having Biden spread his plutocratic entrails across the debate floor, could really help the D ticket.
Martin
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Maybe. The budget is the only thing that can’t be filibustered, and it’ll likely be damn close to 50/50 in the Senate.
Frankensteinbeck
I think Ryan is the best option Romney can get. He’s more charismatic than Romney and will not embarrass him, because they believe in the same things – starve the poor to feed the rich – but Ryan can say it more prettily. No negatives Romney doesn’t have already, and he brings in the single most important constituency Romney lacks – the media. Don’t get me wrong, awful VP pick, but the only one that slightly improves a crummy position.
@Anya:
I don’t think he regrets it at all. The comission did its job. It put a bunch of obstructionist assholes in a room to bloviate at each other, while taking away any power they might have to accomplish anything. It’s an old trick.
PeakVT
@Martin: That was a joke, and apparently a poor one. I’ll try to be less obscure next time.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Martin:
If the GOP gets the Senate, bid adieu to the filibuster.
chopper
i’m sure the evangelical crowd will absolutely knock the doors down trying to cast their vote for a mormon and a guy whose political philosophy comes from a militant atheist.
AA+ Bonds
@Martin:
They’re all safe until some hidden bomb from ten years ago explodes in their chests (or nuts) and gets gore all over Romney and that’s why I think it would be smart for them to pick someone very early and hyper-vet their choice
FWIW I don’t even think Palin had much of an effect on McCain’s campaign, which was both doomed and poorly run otherwise and pre-prepped Palin as the scapegoat, but the current self-serving myth among the Republican professional politics class is that she sank McCain, and to continue to live in that myth I believe they will internally pick a well-regarded white male VP safe and early and may already have done so
kMc
I just want to congratulate on the awesome Pavement reference on the title, there. Good work, Douglas.
FuriousPhil
I can’t really conjure up any strong emotion about Romney anymore. Apathetic dislike, I guess. If I met someone like him outside of a political framework, I’d probably decide he’s not really offensive, and vaguely smelling of antiseptic.
Ryan, on the other hand – I think he masturbates to Atlas Shrugged, and listening to the details of his insane fiscal plans and budgets, and healthcare fixes – the historical figure that gives me the same vibe as Paul Ryan is Joseph Goebbels for some reason. Yes, he’s that creepy.
Martin
@AA+ Bonds: You’re only focusing on the electorate – not on what the ticket allows Obama/Biden to do. A Romney/Ryan ticket looks like Obama vs a couple of bankers. It’s going to be populism vs financial engineering. It hands voting issues like foreign policy completely to the Dems, and they can attack very strongly on that front.
Obama/Biden would have a ton of room to operate with a Romney/Ryan ticket.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: Problem with Ryan is that, I think he is none to bright, or at least not particularly fast on his feet in real time. From what I have seen in clips, he relies on filibuster tactics and repetition of buzz words and slogans, and appeal to his hurt feefees. That might work in interviews controlled by the nonentity corporate hack reporters and anchors, but won’t work in a national debate with a Biden.
Romney is smart, problem is he does not know how to use his smarts very well to sell snake oil. I heard a clip of him explaining why all and only the bad economics things that happened since 2008 are Obama’s and only Obama’s fault. Romney was smart enough to know it was BS, so kept hammering and hectoring away at the various arbitrary stipulations that are needed to make his bogus
argument. Did not sound very convincing, and was irritating.
But, I can only bear to watch this stuff in short clips on the internet, so maybe I am missing something that people who can stand to sit through more of this stuff on TV can see.
AA+ Bonds
To put the Ryan budget in context for November, how big of a deal did the press make of Joe Biden’s plan to partition Iraq
The reason Cheney’s power grab worked is because it takes a TON of work for the press (and thus everyone else) to give a shit about the Vice President or the candidate, it takes something like that Couric interview or Eagleton’s electroshock treatments
jl
@EconWatcher: I agree. Biden has more credibility on working and middle class issues than most. As Obama reportedly noted, for some reason or other, Biden hasn’t cashed in on his office like most others have either, so compared to his colleague, he is still a poor.
Steve Bollea
Joe “Rode Amtrak to the Senate because he cared for his children after his first wife died” Biden would absolutely destroy Ryan, no matter what the media said. Everybody actually watching would see it.
danimal
I’m pretty convinced Romney/Ryan is the 2012 GOP ticket. FWIW.
AA+ Bonds
@Martin:
I think you are both overestimating both how much the media sees Ryan as a financier and how much the media sees Biden as a populist
The first tactic might allow some attack room because of the Republian primaries but the second is a ship that has sailed; the press now see Biden as a guy who hosts parties for celebrities that they wish they could go to
Handling the press is like all other marketing – truly creating demand is something of legend and will only be done as a last resort
As far as foreign policy experience, there is literally nothing Romney can do about that in the American system
jl
@AA+ Bonds: But the Ryan plan is not just some goofy idea of a VP candidate. It is the official plan of the House GOP, and if Romney cites Ryan economic doctrine as a reason for putting him on the ticket, it will be Romney’s as well.
I think those considerations will make Ryan economic doctrine a prominent campaign issue.
A lot of Biden’s ideas were just Biden’s ideas on various stuff, which ranged from very good and insightful to goofy, but they were not discussed much.. But notice wrt, for example, legislative bankruptcy and credit card contract law, Biden’s views did gain some prominence in the campaign, precisely because they were involved in legislation.
AA+ Bonds
@Steve Bollea:
To be an absolute prick, they’re called the media for a reason
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Martin:
For the most part this in on-point. But the other thing that was risky about Palin is that she is a world-class babbling idiot. She might not have had a long track record to expose this where everybody could see it, but a day or two of private conversation would have revealed it to any reasonably intelligent observer. I mean honestly, politics aside, can any of us imagine spending even a long elevator ride in an enclosed space with that women talking without figuring it out? McCain fucked up the Palin pick because (A) he didn’t spend enough time with her personally to vet her at that level, and (B) the horny old fucker got a case of the starbursts, meaning what time he did have to evaluate her, was totally wasted.
AA+ Bonds
@jl:
Off the top of my head the response I would give if working for Romney 2012 would be that Ryan was part of the Obama-appointed National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and refused to endorse once it became clear that liberals would never compromise on spending even when Democrats and Republicans agreed it needed to be cut
I would probably get that out front before they could move on the Ryan budget as an issue, before Ryan was even picked officially
You will recognize this as a version of a narrative that is extremely popular among the Villagers and will serve to make Ryan look even better in their eyes
Bowles-Simpson is not popular in general but it is very popular among the people who tell stupid fence-sitters how to vote and why
Satanicpanic
@Clime Acts:
He’s not nearly as likeable (which is saying something) and that’s what matters.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Paul Ryan’s a career politician who has never worked a non-political job in his adult life. Romney was involved at Bain Capital for less than 15 years (1984-1999, with but two LOAs), versus 18 years as a politician (1994-present).
__
Yet they will both be allowed run as ‘outsiders’ by the MSM.
dollared
Not to get all old-fashioned on you all, but you pick a veep to win a state. So it comes down to Scott Walker. If he loses the recall, the odds of Wisconsin going Republican are exactly zero. If Walker wins the recall, then Ryan can bring Wisconsin.
Romney will have that data in June, so once he has that data we can all debate how many times Sully & Friends can call him a genius for picking Ryan.
Hill Dweller
It doesn’t matter if Ryan is the VP pick, because the Obama campaign is going to tie Romney to both the vouchercare vote and Ryan’s most recent budget.
The Obama campaign knows that people are going to freak out when they hear the consequences of Ryan’s policies. Romney supports said policies, and Ryan is going to be his running mate. The only question now is if it will be figuratively or literally.
AA+ Bonds
In a lot of ways the highly-diminished drooling endorsement of the Ryan budget this year by the Village compared to the last time around will help Ryan, because people don’t remember shit and this way the Cocktail Crew will be able to turn their vague crotch feelings into reality
AA+ Bonds
I still don’t think Romney is going to win or anything; I despise prognostication and despise myself for saying this but my Feelings told me that his entire campaign was doomed when he lost South Carolina, because it put a huge crack in his narrative for donors seeking to get return on their investment
Since Reagan, Republicans have come to believe that the South Carolina primary is Fucking Magic
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
One of the boy scouts that they raped outs them? and has video?
Clime Acts
@Satanicpanic:
Perhaps you’re right, generally speaking. For myself, Bush always made my skin crawl. His folksly, good ol’ boy schtick was so obviously fake and the bitter ugliness underneath was there for anyone to see…who was WILLING to see it.
talk about the Emperor’s Clothes. Ick.
Rhoda
I just want to say being afraid of Paul Ryan because he’s such a pretty, pretty boy is complete and utter bullshit. Paul Ryan can not win a national election because Paul Ryan has spent two years publically trying to destroy Medicare and replace it with vouchercare. Republicans, if they lose the house, will be able to trace that loss back to their voting out the Ryan budget not once but TWICE. Paul Ryan is poison and god willing, Mitt Romney will drink that shit down and lose in November.
So, no I’m not worried about the fact that Romney and Ryan look good together. I’m salivating over the opportunity a Romney-Ryan ticket provides; it lets Democrats not only hit the Medicare thing hard but the Bush regime again goes on trial since Ryan was there in leadership at the time.
Satanicpanic
@Clime Acts: Whatever it is, it worked for Charlie Sheen for a long time too. I can’t explain it.
John M. Burt
Oh, go for it, guys!
AA+ Bonds
Dan Savage is on my shit list for comments he made to students in NC about our anti-gay amendment ballot measure in May, but I have to admit I saw “McCain blasts Santorum” as a CNN headline and went hee hee hee because it is really easy to imagine McCain emitting just horizontal geysers of diarrhea while gritting his teeth
jl
@AA+ Bonds:
One thing I noticed about South Carolina is that a higher percentage of whites voted for Obama there than most other solid south states. I think about a quarter of whites in SC voted for Obama. That is higher than MS, AL, or GA (though not higher than GA by much).
Not sure about TX. FL doesn’t count because it is definitely a weird southern state.
So, for the hubbub about SC being conservative and having racial issues, it does not vote as southern as other solid south states. Not sure what is up with that place.
Martin
@AA+ Bonds:
And why are you ceding Biden and Ryans ability to shape their own narrative? They’re not inanimate objects incapable of responding to external stimuli. They’re people – and they’re going to shift and shape and adapt and campaign. The media are largely stenographers in this game, and if Obama/Biden don’t bring up Ryan as a financier, than they won’t report on it. But if they do, then they will. And if Biden speaks as a populist and chooses populist issues on the campaign trail, then the media will declare him a populist.
This is why swiftboating is so important in modern politics. Kerry should have absolutely destroyed Bush as the brave warrior, foreign policy expert but a protracted smear campaign allowed a different narrative to be painted that gave that mantle to Bush. The media didn’t cause that, the campaigns did. The media simply reported the end result. We can say (rightly) that the media were complicit in supporting the lie, but they didn’t originate the lie – Bush/Rove did. The campaigns are going to build the narrative they need – and they’re going to build that narrative with the materials at hand.
But there’s no way we’re going to be able to fully predict what the end result will look like, because it’ll depend entirely on how effective these campaigns can execute (and Obama’s team executes every bit as well as Rove’s did, if not better) but we can at least assess what materials they’re starting with.
Martin
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You’re leaving out the fact that McCain is also a babbling idiot and likely couldn’t assess that in others. But aside from that, spot on.
Martin
@Clime Acts:
Sure he is – moreso. Remember, governing and campaigning are entirely different skillets. Bush was a damn good campaigner, but when it came to governing, he was shit. But he was a good enough campaigner to pull out a win in 2004 in spite of his crappy performance as President.
Romney is a shitty campaigner. He might be a brilliant executive (I seriously doubt it) but for the period of time which matters from now until Nov 6, pretty much the only skill that matters is that of campaigner. The only place where their executive skill shows up is in how well they run their campaign (which is what gave me doubts about Clinton – her campaign was a little bit of a train wreck) and in how they factually address policy issues (which Clinton did very well on). Romney does the policy part well every so often, and then he’s forced to walk it back a few hours later. Executive Romney will sometimes say something smart, and then Candidate Romney trips over his own dick trying to repair it.
Bush really never did that. His worst moment was not knowing world leaders, which was very early on. I think he got the message right there that he needed to get his shit together, and to a decent degree he did.
WaterGirl
@Rhoda: I’m still trying to get over someone saying Ryan is “hot”. eewww. I don’t know in what world Paul Ryan would be considered hot, but it’s not the one I inhabit.
catclub
@jl: Interesting. I got no idea either. Mississippi was 11% of the white vote for Obama, while Utah was about 40% of the white vote for Obama.
(There is effectively zero black vote in Utah.) Racism is alive.
If SC had 25% of the white vote for Obama, something’s happening there. If Obama had gotten 15% of the white vote in MS, he would have won there.
canuckistani
Has everyone forgotten that Ryan was divorced by Jeri (7 of 9) Ryan for trying to get her to go wild with other men in sex clubs? Can that possibly fly with the fundagelicals?
Martin
@jl:
You’re exactly right. SC is very, very strangely nearly in play, and GA is in play. MS and AL seem to be exceedingly polarized along racial lines as compared to SC and GA. I suspect it’s because SC and GA have larger transplant populations than MS and AL. They’ve got a little bit of the Florida thing going.
TX doesn’t have the black/white divide. It’s much more white/latino and even more than that I think it’s native/immigrant, with a non-trivial latino population on the native side. But if latinos had voted in 2008 at the same turnout rates as whites, Obama would have won the state. Given the growth the state has seen – much of it transplant and latino, I think it’s in play if Obama is going in with a national lead and if the GOP candidate doesn’t resonate in the state – which Romney doesn’t. I don’t think Texas needs a good-ol-boy to resonate, but Texas is a big industrial state, particularly petrochemicals, shipping, that kind of stuff. That’s why oil men have always done well there, including guys like Cheney – they understand what’s key to Texas’s economy. I don’t think Romney can project that. Romney’s a banker. So I don’t think either party will have a home advantage there – and I think that opens the door for Obama. I think he’s going to make a strong run for Texas and try and pick up Georgia as well.
catclub
@Martin: Also, Mitt, like Newt, has the peculiar ability to have people dislike him more, the more he campaigns. His unfavorables have risen and they rise fastest in the states where he has campaigned heavily.
I am also hoping that the hate he engenders in his GOP competitors ( heavily documented from the 2008 campaign) remains a gift that keeps on giving.
newt and Santorum sniping all the way to November would be fun.
Martin
@canuckistani: Different Ryan. That was Jack Ryan, who Obama would have faced in the Ill Senate race if he hadn’t have dropped out due to that revelation. That’s what burdened us with Alan Keyes, but brought us the 27% rule.
catclub
@canuckistani: I think you may be referring to a Ryan that was running for Gov in Illinois.
Or you are right and I am mistaken.
Satanicpanic
@canuckistani: Different Ryan
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Martin:
Personally I think the 2000 campaign was actually the more difficult win for W to pick up, since he didn’t have the post 9-11 fear factor to lean on. If W had lost the 2004 campaign he would have been the first incumbent US President to be turned out of office during a major war. Other presidents who failed to win re-election during wartime stepped down during their party’s primary campaign (e.g. LBJ in 1968) rather than risk going down to defeat in the general election. On those grounds I never felt at any point during the 2004 campaign that Kerry had a really solid shot at winning the election. It would have been a major historical anomaly and I didn’t think Kerry had it in him to pull off an upset like that.
ETA: but your larger point that W was an excellent campaigner is well put.
WaterGirl
@canuckistani: I think that was Jack Ryan, not Paul Ryan.
canuckistani
D’oh!
Apologies. There are too many Ryans.
Still, maybe I’ll spread that about among conservatives as confused as I am and see if it sticks…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@catclub:
This is because he has a poor ground game and relies very heavily on negative advertising. It is well known that negative ads work because they drive down the target’s favoribility ratings more than they drive down the ratings of the candidate who sponsors the ad, but they do drive down both. So the harder Mitt carpet bombs the airwaves, the less people like him. This is one reason why candidates are ill-advised to do a lot of negative advertising during a primary campaign, because all of the advantages accrued to the winner turn into a sunk cost which disappears with the other losing primary candidates when they depart the stage.
Martin
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yeah, I agree. Incumbents have a HUGE advantage. Something we seem to take as a given for every race but President, for whatever reason. I just don’t understand the pessimism given to Obama considering he’s going into this thing with enormous odds in his favor.
But we go into open elections generally pretty blind about the candidates we’re choosing. Governors give us the best insight. Everyone else is pretty much a crapshoot. But incumbents tell us a TON. But most of all, they tell a risk-adverse electorate how much damage they might do. Bush papered over his economic damage with his security actions, and minimized the appearance of risk to the country, and to anyone individually. Had we known 2008 was coming, we’d have kicked his ass out in a cold second. And that’s ultimately the question voters are going to ask themselves: Who has the potential to make my life most miserable? Obama or Romney? And they’ll vote against that person. That’s why the point-in-time state of the economy doesn’t matter – it’s the trend that matters. If the economy is shit but improving, the incumbent is less risky than the challenger, who might stop that trend. If the economy is good but worsening, the incumbent is riskier than the challenger, who might improve it.
Martin
@canuckistani: I approve of this message.
WaterGirl
@canuckistani:
Laughing over here because I had the same thought. Is it wrong to use something like that against low information/wrong information voters? Seriously, how long would it take them to find out if this Ryan is “that” Ryan, if they were actually trying to make an informed decision?
ETA: Does that make me a bad person?
Edit 2: Was not meaning this in any way to be a slam on canuckistani!
gogol's wife
@WaterGirl:
Same here. Just can’t see it. He looks like Eddie Munster (as I think has been pointed out here before).
gogol's wife
@canuckistani:
Wrong Ryan.
ETA: Note to self: read all comments before commenting. I really don’t have time to keep up with all this stuff!
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: Re the deficit commission, I have a different sense — my view is that the plan was to go all “Team of Rivals” and calculate that anything THAT group decided to agree on might well be worth doing. There were so many choke points built into the structure that, to get an agreement, someone would have had to be swayed out of their default position. And if that happened, it might reflect a genuine breakthrough. So I don’t think the point was to set up a process that deliberately led nowhere, but rather to create one that, in the unlikely event it did indeed lead somewhere, would be a careful balance of policies and ideologies.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Martin:
The other aspect that I think we tend to overlook is that the Dems haven’t been this well positioned vs the GOP on National Security/Daddy Party issues since probably 1960 and maybe even 1944. The Dems have either been paddling upsteam against the current on these issues, or they’ve been total non-issues so far as the campaign was concerned, for my entire lifetime. The GOP doesn’t have any practical experience with running against a Dem without that crutch to lean on. They are going to be like a long distance runner in a marathon run at 7,000 ft above sea level pitted against an opponent who is acclimated; they will be sucking wind for the whole race and not even knowing what the problem is.
grandpa john
@dollared: Well It appears that that eliminates Ryan then, since the RCP average has Obama at +11.8 over Romney, meaning that WI is likely to go dem regardless of Ryan being selected
28 Percent
Ryan as veep would certainly make it difficult for Romney to separate himself from the Ryan Republican brand that, judging from last night’s speech, Obama is going to be trying to run against.
But the downside is that Ryan appears to make Romney feel comfortable and relaxed. If these two go on tour being charming to each other, the public could be charmed by it. As long as they stay away from anything that sounds remotely like policy, it could work.
On another note, please tell me that the journalist who wrote that article purposely sought out Wisconsin’s three stupidest Republicans, because yeesh…
Mike in NC
@28 Percent:
So they’re like R2D2 and C-3PO?
grandpa john
@Martin:
SC is seeing growth from people moving in from other states, especially in the north western area and even more so the coastal area think Myrtle Beach,Charleston, and Hilton Head extended along the whole coastal region. Also our Latino population is really growing and all over the state and even in the rural areas. The small town I live in now has several families living here and running business. This is what pisses me off about the failure of the Democratic party to continue pushing Deans 50 state strategy, It would only take about a 5-7 % shift in voting to return to a state that would be in play so instead of Dems from other parts of the country constantly Jeering and making fun of SC, why not put some brotherly love and work into supporting those of us who are not wingnuts or racist or any of the other slurs I constantly read, and see if we can become at least a swing state.
FlipYrWhig
@grandpa john: The Democrats that would come from SC wouldn’t be particularly progressive, though, would they? The downside of the 50 state strategy is that it opens the door to further ideological, shall we say, pluralism. I live in Virginia so I know that southern Dems are not likely to be blogosphere darlings. I only mention any of this because the desire to have more Democrats often conflicts with the desire to have more liberals among Democrats.
JoyfulA
@catclub: 26% of whites voted for Obama in South Carolina; 23% in Georgia.
The “Upstate” in South Carolina is where Bob Jones University and DeMint and the rightwing crazies are in charge, and it’s a lot whiter than the rest of the state, which has plenty of Democrats and normal people who should be encouraged and grown. There are possibilities.
I know nothing of how Georgia got to 23%.
Nikita
@catclub:
Not to bring up a dead thread but I remembered a graph from the 08 primaries which showed that Obama’s % of the white vote (vs Clinton) decreased the higher the overall black population in that state. I think this may explain why you see him getting 25% of the white vote in SC and only 15% in MS.
ETA: Oh yeah. I found the graphs.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/03/david-sirota-on.html
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2008/05/obama-support-i.html