by Sandy » Sat Aug 11, 2012 8:31 pm
I'm not sure how much a VP choice actually helps a ticket outside the various party constituencies. There are those who think that it could make a difference in terms of picking up a state and its electoral votes. In this case, Ryan has avoided running for a senate seat in predominantly Democratic Wisconsin, precisely because he can't get the statewide support he would need. The political scientists and experts have all said that the key to a Romney victory is being able to win moderate independent voters, make inroads among Latino voters and carry the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. I think the choice the President's campaign people feared the most was Marco Rubio. Rubio might not deliver a lot of moderate independents, but he would have helped with Latinos and with carrying Florida. The choice of Ryan either delivers the moderate indpendents and hispanics wholesale to Obama, or at least keeps them from the polls supporting the GOP. Ryan's position on what he calls "entitlements" will kill Romney's chances with older voters, and thus widen Obama's margin, already 6 percentage points in the polls, in Florida. The right wing of the Republican party doesn't deliver Ohio or Pennsylvania, either. So I don't really understand this move. If they need a VP choice to "energize" the economic conservatives, then they were in big trouble before he made this choice. Perhaps the only choice that would have been worse than this would have been Palin.