Ryan will fire up activists on both sides and will probably cause a flood of donations to both candidates. It is unlikely he will affect the votes of most ordinary Americans, whose minds are largely made up. Not even the polarising figure of Sarah Palin affected the race very much, and Ryan will not provide the kind of spectacle that she did.
Instead the Ryan pick shows that Romney still believes he can win, and if he wins, he wants to be able to govern. View his full profile here. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. Posted 15 Aug 15 Aug Wed 15 Aug at am. More on:. Top Stories Liberal backbenchers call for more ambitious emission reduction target.
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Japan's former princess leaves for US with commoner husband. How likely is that to happen? But it may also be that the timing reflects a more fundamental fact about presidential campaigns — that the start of the general election campaign now precedes the traditional post-convention Labor Day kick off.
In short, campaigns are playing out at an accelerated pace. Keep in mind that early voting begins in many states in September, and estimates are that some 40 million Americans will vote early this election. Romney may have worried that if he waited until the Convention to announce his VP pick, as most candidates have done, he risked allowing Obama to frame the media narrative via his early spending blitz, particular with the size of the persuadable voter pool dwindling quickly.
By announcing today, Romney can use the Ryan pick to kick off his four-day bus tour through key swing states, as the first step in reaching out to the dwindling number of undecided voters. The key question remains, however: are they paying attention at this stage of the race? Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. But the reality is messier and less comforting for conservatives than that.
In the Romney White House, Ryan would not be the policy designer-in-chief as much as the top salesman for Romney's policies. As Barack Obama discovered, it is difficult for a president to carry out his plans even when his party controls both houses of Congress, which may be the case for Romney if he can pull off a win in November. The US president deals not with a loyal, disciplined legislative party but with an unruly mass of Congressmen who all have their own elections to win and their own deals to make.
If Romney fails to deliver sufficiently hard-line conservative policies he will face a revolt from Congressmen who have to fight Primary challenges from the right. With Paul Ryan as vice-president, a Republican Congress will be much more prepared to go along with a policy agenda that will inevitably be compromised by the need for re-election in No matter how much Romney waters Ryan's policies down - budget cuts will become shallower, major reforms will be delayed - Congress will trust that it is part of a long-term strategy to achieve conservative aims.
And perhaps most importantly Ryan himself will be in the White House and forced to defend it, rather than the potential leader of a conservative attack from Congress. Romney's campaign has already said that he will not simply adopt the Ryan budget, and that there are differences between the two on issues such as Medicare.
Ryan for his part has already softened his budget once for reasons of political expediency. His original plan in proposed a voucher system for Medicare and the abolition of capital gains tax which would have reduced Romney's tax bill to less than 1 per cent. The version recently passed by the House reduces the top marginal tax rate to 25 per cent and allows Medicare to compete with government-subsidised private plans in the healthcare market for seniors.
Republicans argue this is the only way to make Medicare solvent for future generations in the face of rising healthcare costs. Democrats claim Ryan's numbers don't add up, and his "reform" of Medicare really amounts to letting the elderly fend for themselves in the marketplace with minimal government support.
If this line of attack is successful it presents serious problems for Republicans, who risk a backlash from the senior citizens who are the most politically active section of the electorate.
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