[Jasusi]

Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be his vice president.
The announcement is being made right now

[Jasusi]

---

Romney picks Paul Ryan as running mate



By Philip Rucker and Dan Balz, Published: August 10 | Updated: Saturday, August 11, 7:14 AM

NORFOLK — Mitt Romney has selected Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate in the presidential race and will make the long-awaited announcement here Saturday morning.

Romney’s campaign told supporters at about 7 a.m. via an iPhone app that the seven-term congressman would be the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Two others who were high on Romney’s short list of VP contenders — former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman — were informed in recent days that they would not be on the ticket, according to two Republican sources. Both were scheduled for other events on Saturday.

Among the early clues that Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, was the likeliest pick was the venue chosen for the early morning announcement — the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk. And overnight, the Web site www.RomneyRyan.com automatically began redirecting readers to the Romney campaign’s home page.

The selection of Ryan would add to the ticket the intellectual architect of the GOP’s approach to slashing deficits and signal a desire to place the nation’s looming fiscal challenges at the center of the campaign’s final months.

Ryan got a strong boost over the past few days from conservatives, with editorials pushing his candidacy in the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review.

Romney’s announcement will come at the start of a four-day bus trip through Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio, and at a time when the former Massachusetts governor has fallen behind President Obama in the polls.

Romney plans to announce his decision about 8:45 a.m., when he tours the USS Wisconsin, a decommissioned World War II-era Navy battleship named to honor the state.

Romney’s campaign advisers reached late Friday refused to discuss what has been a confidential process and noted that Romney had promised to reveal his decision to supporters via a campaign iPhone application.

With some conservatives fretting publicly that he has lost the summer, Romney is under pressure to alter the course of his campaign. He will have several chances to do so over the next three weeks. At the end of the month, Republicans will gather in Tampa for a four-day convention that will provide the former Massachusetts governor a chance to reintroduce himself to the country and reset the race on his terms.

Romney’s effort gets under way in Virginia, where he begins a four-day bus tour through swing states on Saturday with his wife, Ann.

If Romney announces Ryan as his running mate, he would offer voters the starkest possible choice on how to address issues of spending and taxing, embracing Ryan’s single-minded focus on reducing the nation’s debt without raising taxes by dramatically altering Americans’ relationship to their government.

It is a fight Democrats, too, have savored, believing the details of Ryan’s budget will convince voters that they offer a fairer path to reduced deficits through a combination of spending cuts and higher taxes on the wealthy.

Ryan would likely energize a GOP base that sought a campaign of forward-looking ideas and not just an endless critique of President Obama.

[BAK]

Paul Ryan, top GOP voice on fiscal matters

By the CNN Wire Staff
August 11, 2012 -- Updated 1218 GMT (2018 HKT)




STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Ryan, 42, is considered the party's leader on fiscal and budgetary issues
• In the past, Ryan has deferred talk of being Mitt Romney's running mate

• He is Romney's pick for VP

(CNN) -- U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is considered a rising GOP star and the Republican Party's leader on fiscal and budgetary issues.
The chairman of the House Budget Committee was first elected to Congress at age 28, and later helped launch the party's "Young Guns" program to recruit candidates in districts where Republicans lost.

Now 42, Ryan is the architect of the House GOP's budget proposal, which Democrats compared to an attack on the poor, but Republicans say is intended to save Medicare and rein in spending.

The chairman of the House Budget Committee was announced as the running mate for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
"It's [Romney's] decision months from now, not mine. So why spend my time thinking about it? If this bridge ever comes that I should cross it, then I'll think about it then. It's not the time to think about it," he told The Wall Street Journal in April.

A native of Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan earned a degree in political science and economics from Miami University in Ohio in 1992. He was raised as a Catholic, and worked at a family construction company before getting into politics. He's known to be an avid hunter and a fitness fanatic.

In the House, Ryan is also a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee.
He has frequently pushed the Republicans' "class warfare" line against President Barack Obama and is a major critic of his signature health reform law.
"If you give us more elected representatives to fix this problem, we will fix this problem in 2013," Ryan said in an interview with CNBC.

Because he hails from Wisconsin, an important battleground, Ryan's youthfulness could appeal to a group with whom the president enjoys advantages.
Ryan is considered a lightning rod, and his presence on the GOP ticket will fundamentally change the 2012 race.

"It would be a bold choice," CNN senior analyst David Gergen said earlier of a Romney-Ryan ticket. "It would be a risky choice."
But there are upsides.
Ryan will likely energize a GOP base often suspicious of Romney, and add youthful vigor to the race with his energetic debates and campaign methods.
Close friends such as former House colleague Mark Green are adamant Ryan would help across the Midwest.

"I think he does get Wisconsin," Green said. "But I think more importantly he gets that sort of blue-collar conservatism that I think is at the heart of the Republican Party."
For months, Romney has tried to frame the race as a referendum on the first Obama term, specifically the president's economic record.

Adding Ryan to the ticket would mean no escaping an onslaught of Democratic criticism that the Republican ticket would "end Medicare as we know it" as Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is fond of saying.

One ad, by nonprofit political organization Agenda Project, critical of the Ryan budget showed a man pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff, and ended with the tagline: "Is America beautiful without Medicare? Ask Paul Ryan and his friends in Congress."
Ryan calls the attacks demagoguery and says Obama has failed to put forward serious proposals to reform costly entitlement programs.

This is the "bold" debate conservatives pushing Ryan want, but other Republicans worry it could steer the campaign focus away from the president and onto GOP proposals.
Other potential downsides include Ryan is a House member popular in what was once considered a competitive swing district, but he has never run statewide. He also has no foreign policy experience.

In light of the Sarah Palin 2008 pick, some will question whether the House member is ready to be commander-in-chief.

"He is without question one of the stars of the Republican future over the next 10 to 20 years," Gergen said. "Whether he is ready at this moment, only the campaign trail could tell. And he's going to get, I'll tell you, he is going to take a real beating."

Ryan is also a policy wonk, a self-described nerd who cut his teeth working for conservatives Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp. Friends say it would be a mistake to underestimate his ambition, or his competitive streak.
CNN's Phil Gast and John King contributed to this report.

[Jasusi]

Let the campaign now begin. It reminds me of George Bush 41 choosing Dan Quayle as his vice president. After the foreign trip fiasco in London, Jerusalem and Poland, Romney needs something to lift him up in the polls. Will Ryan do it?

[The Boss]

I don't think it is a right choice...
Obama is happy with this for sure

[Hofstede]

I don't think it is a right choice...
Obama is happy with this for sure

Obama team got what they wanted. Romney and Ryan now the game starts. This is a ticket to the defeat. Florida is now gone Blue

[Hofstede]

Obama Camp response

(CNN) - President Barack Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, issued a statement on Mitt Romney's running mate selection as the candidate announced his pick in Norfolk, Virginia on Saturday morning:

"In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes."

[BAK]

Why Mitt Romney is losing

By Reihan Salam, CNN Contributor
August 10, 2012 -- Updated 1522 GMT (2322 HKT)


Mitt Romney visits a cornfield in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday as his campaign struggles to gain momentum.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Reihan Salam: The scars of the GOP primaries are dragging Mitt Romney's candidacy down
• He says Romney moved to the right to win over conservatives, now lacks centrist appeal
• A variety of innovative ideas could have broadened his appeal, Salam writes

• Salam: Taking on big banks and cutting energy subsidies would be smart policies for Romney

Editor's note: Reihan Salam, a CNN contributor, is a columnist for The Daily; a writer for the National Review's "The Agenda" blog; a policy advisor for e21, a nonpartisan economic research group; and co-author of "Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream."

New York (CNN) -- Mitt Romney spent weeks battling Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination, and he faced blistering attacks from Rick Perry and other GOP rivals along the way. And now he is paying the price.

CNN Poll: Obama holds 7-point lead over Romney
Romney's failure to surpass Barack Obama this summer stems in no small part from his reluctance to make any bold moves on policy, and this reluctance is a direct product of the beating he's taken from conservative critics for much of the last year.

The basic rap on Romney -- who represented, let us not forget, the conservative alternative to John McCain during the 2008 race for the Republican presidential nomination -- was that he wasn't sufficiently conservative. To reassure conservative primary voters, Romney embraced positions on a wide range of issues, from immigration to taxes, that are more popular among reliable Republicans than among swing voters.

Opinion: Reid's Romney smears an insult to voters

Reihan Salam

As the political analyst Sean Trende, author of "The Lost Majority," has argued, the central dilemma facing the Romney campaign is that it has essentially secured all of the low-to-medium hanging fruit for a Republican presidential candidate by condemning Obama's economic record. Yet this hasn't been enough to give Romney a lead over the incumbent president.

Indeed, there is at least some reason to believe that the Romney campaign is losing ground. This strongly suggests that the GOP needs a more positive message with crossover appeal. The trouble, of course, is that Romney's efforts to inoculate himself against charges of squishiness have made it very difficult for him to pivot to the center.

What might a more daring Romney campaign have looked like?







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Romney accused of tax shelter role







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Bill Burton responds to ad controversy
A more populist Romney campaign would spend time and money bashing the big banks. While Romney has called for repealing the Dodd-Frank Act, the centerpiece of Obama's fitful efforts to reform Wall Street, he hasn't provided much in the way of detail regarding how he'd address the too-big-to-fail problem. Given that anger against taxpayer-funded bank bailouts helped fuel the rise of the tea party movement, and in turn the Republican congressional victories of 2010, this constitutes a serious strategic mistake.

Recently, the right-leaning Government Accountability Institute, led by Peter Schweizer, author of the muckraking manifesto "Throw Them All Out," issued an incendiary report that accuses the Obama administration of neglecting financial fraud prosecutions because of the deep ties between senior Justice Department officials and the uppermost echelons of the financial sector. This is the kind of argument that might resonate among voters reconsidering their 2008 vote for Barack Obama.

Yet this argument would need to be connected to a clear policy narrative about what a Republican president would do to take on the power of the big banks. A number of conservative and libertarian thinkers -- including James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute; Thomas Hoenig, former Fed governor and FDIC director; and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business -- have called for breaking them up by implementing a modernized version of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that created a strict wall of separation between commercial and investment banking.

Sebastian Mallaby of the Council of Foreign Relations, a market-friendly centrist perhaps best known for his exhaustive history of the hedge fund industry, "More Money Than God," has even argued that investors might welcome a bank break-up.

Opinion: Will Obamacare raise the price of your pizza?
Leaving aside the substantive merits of this and other proposals designed to curb the too-big-to-fail phenomenon, this is an accessible idea that would help Romney play against type. So it has come as a disappointment to many on the right that the Romney campaign has been dismissive of the idea.

This could reflect a conviction on the part of the candidate that Wall Street is not in need of a radical overhaul. Or, more cynically, the Romney campaign might be reluctant to alienate influential Republican donors in the financial services industry. Yet the decision to tread lightly on financial malfeasance might cost Romney the election.

Romney's evolution on tax policy is also telling.
During the 1996 New Hampshire GOP primary, Romney, a private citizen at the time, paid for an advertisement criticizing Steve Forbes' signature flat tax on the grounds that it was a giveaway to the ultra-rich. And his original 2012 tax proposal was a fairly modest one, which called for extending the Bush-era tax cuts while also eliminating taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest for married couples earning less than $200,000.

The idea was that this would be a prelude to a larger tax code overhaul. But when Romney feared that Rick Santorum might defeat him in Michigan's crucial Republican primary, he released a far more ambitious, and far more expensive, tax cut proposal that is being criticized as pie-in-the-sky.
Rather than campaign on a deep tax cut that would benefit high-earners, the Romney campaign might have instead championed a revenue-neutral tax reform that cut taxes dramatically on families with children while effectively raising them on childless high-earners.

In effect, this would recognize that parents are making a significant investment in America's economic future and that this investment should be treated favorably. This idea has been championed by conservative policy entrepreneurs such as Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review and Robert Stein, a veteran of George W. Bush's Treasury Department, yet it has met with fierce resistance from The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which sees it as an unjustifiable tax giveaway that is an unhelpful distraction from the need to cut marginal tax rates.

In choosing to embrace the Journal's view, Romney may have sacrificed an opportunity to connect with cash-strapped middle class parents, including many independents and Democrats.

Recently, Eli Lehrer of the pro-market R Street Institute made another suggestion: Instead of simply attacking federal loan guarantees for clean-tech firms such as Solyndra, the federal government should get out of the business of subsidizing the energy sector entirely. Clean-tech subsidies would go, but so would subsidies in the tax code that benefit the oil and gas industries. It is an idea that could in theory appeal to environmentalists, and it would demonstrate that Romney's criticisms of Solyndra aren't just political posturing.

Right now, the Romney campaign seems to believe that it can defeat Obama by running a conventional and cautious campaign. But as the weeks go by and the president's lead remains frozen in place, this is starting to look like a bad bet.

[Nyani Ngabu]

Let the campaign now begin. It reminds me of George Bush 41 choosing Dan Quayle as his vice president. After the foreign trip fiasco in London, Jerusalem and Poland, Romney needs something to lift him up in the polls. Will Ryan do it?

And we all know how that '88 election turned out, right? Lol....

[Nyani Ngabu]

I don't think it is a right choice...
Obama is happy with this for sure

People said the same thing about Joe Biden and Dan Quayle.

I don't even think for a second anybody that he could have chosen would have been right for you.

Had he chosen Marco Rubio you would have said the same thing. Had he chosen Rob Portman you would have said the same thing.

I mean anybody he would have chosen, your reaction would have been the same. So I'm not at all surprised by your reaction.

[The Boss]

People said the same thing about Joe Biden and Dan Quayle.

I don't even think for a second anybody that he could have chosen would have been right for you.

Had he chosen Marco Rubio you would have said the same thing. Had he chosen Rob Portman you would have said the same thing.

I mean anybody he would have chosen, your reaction would have been the same. So I'm not at all surprised by your reaction.

I know you are a Republican and a TEA party huge fan...
but seriously are u against Healthcare ?
and do u really believe Romneycare and Obamacare are different?

[Nyani Ngabu]

I know you are a Republican and a TEA party huge fan...
but seriously are u against Healthcare ?
and do u really believe Romneycare and Obamacare are different?

I am not at all a Republican. How am I a Republican if I was for Hilary in '08?

I am a big Clintonite...just in case you didn't know. Ooh wait, you were not even here in '08 so I'll give you a pass....

[The Boss]

I am not at all a Republican. How am I a Republican if I was for Hilary in '08?

I am a big Clintonite...just in case you didn't know. Ooh wait, you were not even here in '08 so I'll give you a pass....

always unatetea Republicans
unaweza kuwa Democrat na ukawa ulimuunga mkono Reagan
au Republican na kumuunga mkono Clinton,,,,
but chama chako ni REepublican nikisoma ur opinions

[Nyani Ngabu]

always unatetea Republicans
unaweza kuwa Democrat na ukawa ulimuunga mkono Reagan
au Republican na kumuunga mkono Clinton,,,,
but chama chako ni REepublican nikisoma ur opinions

Mimi siyo Republican. Sina hata kadi yao. Na pia mimi siyo Democrat. I just don't like Obama because of the way his campaign treated Bill and Hilary in '08. They even suggested that the Clintons were racist.

I am an independent - who is - fiscally conservative, socially responsible, and personally accountable.

Wewe ni Democrat?

[The Boss]

Mimi siyo Republican. Sina hata kadi yao. Na pia mimi siyo Democrat. I just don't like Obama because of the way his campaign treated Bill and Hilary in '08. They even suggested that the Clintons were racist.

I am an independent - who is - fiscally conservative, socially responsible, and personally accountable.

Wewe ni Democrat?

mimi niko na Raf Nader wa consumer protections lol
tatizo no body listen to them much
but niko nao 100 percent lol

[Nyani Ngabu]

mimi niko na Raf Nader wa consumer protections lol
tatizo no body listen to them much
but niko nao 100 percent lol

Sasa kama uko na Nader 100% kwa nini unawatetea Democraps?

[Ndinani]

I don't think it is a right choice...
Obama is happy with this for sure

Can you explain as to why you think Ryan is not the right choice?

[Nyani Ngabu]

Can you explain as to why you think Ryan is not the right choice?

He probably can't.

If he does, most likely he'll repeat what is being said on CNN by the so called pundits.

And I would like to know who he thinks would have been the right choice.

[Mbuzi Mzee]

Romney just picked a running mate who is as uncharismatic and out-of-touch as he is. Say what you will about Palin, she was able to appeal to a section of the GOP base that McCain couldn't with her ability to work a crowd. Romney and Ryan are two peas in a pod: awkward socially, unable to understand or connect with the poor or middle class, rich beyond reason. Rather than find a running mate with broad appeal, he found a young clone of himself.

[Jasusi]

And we all know how that '88 election turned out, right? Lol....

Yeah, in '88 Bush did not fumble on a foreign trip as Romney has.