Paul Ryan was their President already. Why make it obvious?
by David Atkins
As everyone analyzes in detail the meaning of Romney's oh-so-bold vice-presidential pick, it's worth remembering this from none other than Grover Norquist earlier this year:
All we have to do is replace Obama. ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate...
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.
The entire Republican primary was a joke played on the fools in the conservative electorate. The only difference between any of them lay in the amount of crazy social conservatism that would come down the executive order pipeline. But as far as major traditional legislation went, they would all be almost exactly alike.
Every single one of them would be a robotic signatory for whatever the Republican House could get past the Senate and onto the desk of whatever Republican rubberstamp figurehead made it into the Oval Office.
And since Paul Ryan rules the Republican budgetary world, his word would be law. Not Mitt Romney's. Not Rick Santorum's. Not Newt Gingrich's. Paul Ryan's. He's their man.
Insiders knew this. Democrats worth their salt knew this already, and have been preparing for the possibility of Republicans attempting to bypass the filibuster to pass the Ryan budget to end Medicare. Republicans knew it also, and knew that Democrats would try mightily to tie their nominal presidential candidate to the deeply unpopular Ryan budget. Democrats on the ground know that it's not only important to re-elect the President who, whatever his other faults might be, would be the only roadblock between a Republican Congress and the passage of the Ryan budget. It's also important to do whatever it takes to win back the House and put the gavel back in Nancy Pelosi's hands.
So the only question remains: why did they choose to make it so obvious that Ryan commands their ship? Why give Congressional Democratic candidates an easy blunt instrument with which to nationalize an election in choppy economic waters against their Republican opponents?
Ryan already ruled this roost. The Republicans' key to success lay in keeping that a secret. Why show their hand before all the cards are down? Nate Silver can't figure it out, either.
Some have theorized that Republican insiders know that Romney will lose, and are therefore establishing an Overton Window mover for 2016. I think that gives conservatives a little too much credit, though. Romney wants to win, and knows this is his last chance. Big Republican donors are frothing at the mouth, desperate to be rid of Barack Obama. They want to win now, not later. And this decision was made with considerable forethought.
Discover why Republicans chose to unveil their true king so early, and you may discover where Romney and friends are at their weakest.
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