Romney's Big Moment Overshadowed by Ryan Problem

The inevitable happened, which I guess is only newsworthy because we doubted its inevitability for large chunks of the last four years. Mitt Romney is the Republican candidate in the 2012 Presidential Election. Congratulations to Mr. Romney and his family, this will probably be the high mark of his political career. He responded with uncharacteristic grace, delivering one of the better speeches of his political career last night. He didn't let himself get carried away in attacks on Obama, which let him remain happily generic and relatively truthful.



He should savor this moment, because the next several months are going to be a miserable grind. Mr. Romney has a big problem, which pretty much entirely summed up by the other half of his ticket. By completely tethering his horse Ryan and the conservative, he has committed himself to the basic partisan dynamic existing in the US, and he has set his campaign on a course for failure.

It's hard to understand why he should have chosen Paul Ryan in the first place. Vice Presidents have very little influence in Presidential elections. To understand this, you have to remember that the American electorate is incredibly misinformed and apathetic towards politics, which is largely the result of the unending stream of partisan crap sprayed on them. When 49 percent of Americans actually know that Obama is a Christian, don't expect them be won over by Paul Ryan before November. He only has one major prime-time appearance in the next three months, the VP debate.

To make matters worse, Ryan is actually pretty unpopular, despite what a lot on the Right might say about it. He was pretty much unknown to the general public before Romney brought him to the ball, and there has been almost no evidence of Ryan actually helping the Romney ticket's chances in November. Americans also strongly oppose his signature Medicare plan, which is why they've desperately run away it over the last couple of weeks.

Many people viewed the Ryan choice as a "game changing" kind of move that was meant to help Romney narrow the gap on Obama. It was probably the wrong risk to take to. By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney's strategy seems to be completely based around the conservative base. Unfortunately for him, there just aren't enough conservatives to actually get him elected.

Even worse, the choice of Paul Ryan highlights a bunch of icky social issues, total abortion bans and unrelenting gay bashing, that all Republicans want to avoid. They've thrown away Missouri already, a race that should have been easy for them to win.

Never has a president been reelected when economic conditions are this bad. A candidate like Romney should be the kind of guy to beat him. Unfortunately, the Republican party is so out of touch that they've lined themselves up for a historic defeat. They'll lose the White House when it should have been easy to take; they'll fail to retake the Senate because a Republican couldn't win states like Missouri. Democrats have spent a long time being known for their talents of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I have little down that this embarrassment will stick to the Republicans for a long time to come.