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On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama.
Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway.
Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/
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On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/
The last time an ordinary member of the House was elected vice president, and the last Republican, was more than 100 years ago: in 1908, when William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman, a New York congressman, were chosen by voters. (Coincidentally, that fall was also the last time that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.)
I laughed.
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On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/
maybe the republican party is planning on pulling a cheney again
bush: bumbling fool who does whatever he's told while the vp puppetmaster who makes all the real decisions
mccain: while not a fool, incredibly senile, and could easily be misled by a vp puppetmistress who makes all the real decisions
romney: incredibly wealthy fool, has never had to work a legitimate day in his life and his political stances are as consistent as the lifespan of schrodinger's cat
seems like a pretty ripe candidate to be led around by a vp puppetmaster who makes all the real decisions
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Really interesting idea about the higher turn out numbers, but I don't think it could work.
He has settled for losing more votes by compounding his current budgeting problem.
A sinking ship would make people as likely to not to bother to vote for him as to definitely vote for him. Keep in mind that the main benefits of his policies actually help a far fewer amount of people then Obama's policies.
If Romney was a risk taker he would risk alienating his own party by becoming more centrist instead of becoming more conservative.
I suppose a positive side effect for Romney would be that it could help him ensure Obama can't get any policies through if repubs can keep control of the house.
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On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/
I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch.
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On August 13 2012 12:54 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch.
I've been seeing this talking point make its way round the internet since the Ryan pick and calling it "pro-democrat" is really stretching.
1) The 1st district of Wisconsin has had a republican representative since 1995.
2) GWB got 53% of the vote in 2004
3) Obama won the district in 2008 but it was a narrow victory of 51.4 to 47.45
At best you could call it a swing district.
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On August 13 2012 08:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 08:33 RenSC2 wrote:On August 13 2012 02:01 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
You are ignoring that bad investments hurt the economy. We're in the mess we are in now largely due to bad investments in housing.
If you want to gouge the rich (really, really gouge them) you'll either wind up with a lot of bad investments or the money will be blown on frivolous consumption and we'll all be poorer for it. You are right, some bad investments do hurt the economy. For example, if a bank uses its customers money then leverages it multiple times in order to invest in subprime mortgages which are piles of garbage that have been mis-rated by the major rating agencies. Then yes, poor investments can be devastating. I guess I didn't think of the scale of trillions of dollars in leveraged money when I said that bad investments are actually good for the overall economy. Unfortunately, in those cases you end up with money that never actually existed being owed to people and since the money never actually existed, it's impossible to pay that money out. So people don't get paid and yes, that's bad for the economy. Leveraged failures can be very dangerous. Normal failures are not bad for the economy. If you have extra cash and you start a restaurant, you rent a building (or have one built) - people get paid. You hire employees - people get paid. You purchase furniture and food - people get paid. If in the end you fail, everyone around you still got paid for quite awhile and they can help create a market in other areas or even try their own hand at the restaurant business. Would it be better if your business made enough money to give yourself a small living expense and all the rest of the money went back into the business? Yep, that's the best case scenario. But the worst case scenario is that you hold onto your money and it does nothing for the economy. A failed business falls somewhere in the middle and creates opportunities for other people. As for frivolous consumption - people get paid. The engineers and mechanics for that ridiculously expensive car get paid. The architects, builders, interior designers, furniture studios, and more all get paid for the ridiculously expensive house (and there's still property taxes on top of that so the government gets yearly paydays too). Those tens of thousands of dollar bottles of wine - people get paid. Prostitutes - people get paid. Name your frivolous consumption - people get paid. 'Normal failures' are just as bad for the economy. When you build a failed restaurant, yes, people get paid. But once the business fails all the income that comes from it disappears. So now to replace that business (and the income it provides) you need to save up money to make a new investment - which pulls money out of the economy.
So you've now admitted that saving up money is bad for the economy. Good. We're getting onto the same page.
The income that came from the restaurant doesn't just disappear. The income initially either came from the original owner as part of startup costs, or it came from customers. If it came from customers, then those customers will simply eat somewhere else and that money will continue to be passed around. If it came from the owner who had savings, then the excess money from the owner would have been distributed out and then redistributed as the employees buy other stuff and then redistributed again and again and would have done much more for the economy than sitting in his account.
It stinks for the owner, no doubt about that, but it's good for the economy. As that restaurant fails, it increases the profitability of other restaurants around it (less competition = more profit). In turn, building a restaurant in that area becomes a better business venture and people are more likely to try building a new restaurant in the area. It won't all happen instantly, but it will happen. It's capitalism 101 and it can be a beautiful thing.
As long as you still have capitalism as the basis of the economy and you have people who strive to do better than others, certain people will end up with more money than others and they'll try to find ways to increase that money further. People will continue to build restaurants where others have failed as long as there is a market. And there will always be a market so long as enough people have money to spend (very different from a few people having a lot of money). So what you need to do economically is encourage investment, even force it if necessary, and then let the market decides who succeeds and who fails. Every success is great and ensures that there will still be someone to put in a new investment. Every failure is fine too because it ensures that the money will be distributed out to more people, all of which have demands that need to be met.
tl;dr:
For the economy: successful investment > unsuccessful investment > no investment.
For you: successful investment > no investment > unsuccessful investment.
The government needs to worry about the economy more than you and should make policies to encourage (or even force) investment and redistribution of wealth.
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On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
They might want Obamacare or not. They might want Romney's tax cuts or not.
For their vote the main thing is whether their slightly preferred policy is achievable / believable?
Ryan's / Romney's policy is too vague. He has just signed up to have a hole in his books. Whether you agree with the goal or not, you can not accept that the plans are concrete without a lot more budget / policy detail. Their only hope is to make a believable set of budget books, but this won't happen and Obama can hammer it all election.
Obama's policy still has question marks, but those question marks aren't near as scary as Romney's. The books balance better and at least he has stated who is paying for some of his policies (wealthy).
I expect that the damage done by the hardcore opposing of Obama's spending / tax plan in previous years would also scare a few voters. Do you want Obama to win by a small amount again, or do you want Obama to have a big enough majority so he has the power to balance the books a bit better?
Myself? I think Romney's plan always sounds great when you are cutting taxes and closing loopholes, but I think it's not realistically possible. I also hope that Obama can make the tougher choices in his 2nd term when he is on the way out, though I don't think the will have much more success at passing laws. It could be interesting to see what this forces Obama to do. I think that with Obamacare founded and America not at war, that getting on top of the debt problem would be how Obama wants to go out.
Real swing voters are 30-50 year old white females.
A couple good photos of Paul Ryan working out... that nails the 50 Shades of Grey demographic.
(and I lost a bet on Rand Paul being VP, but I double down on him becoming Sec Treasury if Romney wins)
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On August 13 2012 12:27 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ maybe the republican party is planning on pulling a cheney again bush: bumbling fool who does whatever he's told while the vp puppetmaster who makes all the real decisions mccain: while not a fool, incredibly senile, and could easily be misled by a vp puppetmistress who makes all the real decisions romney: incredibly wealthy fool, has never had to work a legitimate day in his life and his political stances are as consistent as the lifespan of schrodinger's catseems like a pretty ripe candidate to be led around by a vp puppetmaster who makes all the real decisions
lol.
There will probably never be a Cheney again. Bush and his staff were immediately put on the shelf in terms of foreign policy when 9/11 hit and were basically devoured like an innocent piece of red meat with some A1 sauce to boot by Cheney and co. Poor little Karl Rove had dreams of being the puppetmaster too 
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On August 13 2012 13:27 RenSC2 wrote:
tl;dr:
For the economy: successful investment > unsuccessful investment > no investment.
For you: successful investment > no investment > unsuccessful investment.
The government needs to worry about the economy more than you and should make policies to encourage (or even force) investment and redistribution of wealth.
Weeeeeeel, in the sort run, sure, bad investment is better than none, but in the long run I'd rather see money spent on useful things (or not spent at all) rather than chucked away. There are always plenty of useful things to spend money on - the 'something is better than nothing' excuse is just that - an excuse to be lazy and chuck money away rather than take the time and effort to spend it on something worthwhile.
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sorry if this has already been answered, but coming from a none american, why would people vote for romney? I'm guessing it has alot to do with his stance on religion, but I just can't see how that would swing voters his way. Most of his pre-election policies to me seem to allienate the core voter, which is the normal public.
I just can't for the life of me see him getting in, and I know FULL well that if he was to try that shit in England, he would get laughed out the houses and recieve a record low number of votes....so how does he appeal to some americans?
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On August 13 2012 12:54 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch.
The man's budget is going to completely alienate every moderate and democrat, and even some left-leaning Republicans. I really don't think this guy was a very good choice.
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On August 13 2012 14:21 RCMDVA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
They might want Obamacare or not. They might want Romney's tax cuts or not.
For their vote the main thing is whether their slightly preferred policy is achievable / believable?
Ryan's / Romney's policy is too vague. He has just signed up to have a hole in his books. Whether you agree with the goal or not, you can not accept that the plans are concrete without a lot more budget / policy detail. Their only hope is to make a believable set of budget books, but this won't happen and Obama can hammer it all election.
Obama's policy still has question marks, but those question marks aren't near as scary as Romney's. The books balance better and at least he has stated who is paying for some of his policies (wealthy).
I expect that the damage done by the hardcore opposing of Obama's spending / tax plan in previous years would also scare a few voters. Do you want Obama to win by a small amount again, or do you want Obama to have a big enough majority so he has the power to balance the books a bit better?
Myself? I think Romney's plan always sounds great when you are cutting taxes and closing loopholes, but I think it's not realistically possible. I also hope that Obama can make the tougher choices in his 2nd term when he is on the way out, though I don't think the will have much more success at passing laws. It could be interesting to see what this forces Obama to do. I think that with Obamacare founded and America not at war, that getting on top of the debt problem would be how Obama wants to go out. Real swing voters are 30-50 year old white females. A couple good photos of Paul Ryan working out... that nails the 50 Shades of Grey demographic. (and I lost a bet on Rand Paul being VP, but I double down on him becoming Sec Treasury if Romney wins)
You must have a low opinion of Americans if you think no one votes based on policies. Your theory would explain Romney's strategy though.
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On August 13 2012 16:09 ContrailNZ wrote:
You must have a low opinion of Americans if you think no one votes based on policies. Your theory would explain Romney's strategy though.
It's an exaggeration to say that no Americans vote based on policies.
It's perfectly true that the vast majority of American have no idea what most of the policies presented and voted on by Congress actually do. Policy is really complicated and dense, and people simply don't have the time to study policy closely.
Or maybe Americans simply can't be arsed to follow politics, and vote for whoever sounds like a good president.
I bet it's more of the latter than the former.
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On August 13 2012 15:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 12:54 xDaunt wrote:On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch. The man's budget is going to completely alienate every moderate and democrat, and even some left-leaning Republicans. I really don't think this guy was a very good choice.
What Ryan will do is reinvigorate the far right and tea partiers, and shore up those voters.
We didn't talk about it much in this thread, but the last month has been VERY bad for Romney. Obama and the Democratic Super PACs have been targeting Romney's character and biography, casting him as a tax-evading, flip-flopping, secretive fancy boy that wants to give tax breaks to his rich friends and not much else. The purpose of this strategy isn't to convert Republicans into Democrats, but rather suppress voters that normally would vote Republican by making them less enthusiastic about their candidate.
All Ryan does for Romney is insure that his ground-game stays strong, and that the people that were already going to vote Republican actually show up at the polls. I don't think it will have an impact on moderate conservatives or independent voters either way.
What it will do is take the Obama's campaigns heat off of Romney ... so they can educate the public about Ryan. Which in my opinion would be bad for Obama.
As an aside, I just want to re-iterate that picking Ryan simply underscores how useless a candidate I think Romney is. Romney is bland, unlikeable, and has not real principles, plans or ideals. So his solution is to delegate all those things to his new VP!
Most of the GOP's leadership actually respects Ryan. NO ONE during the Republican nomination process had any enthusiasm for Romney.
Romney. What the fuck is he even doing in this election?
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On August 13 2012 17:02 Defacer wrote:
Romney. What the fuck is he even doing in this election?
Remember the dudes and crazy bitch he ran against?
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On August 13 2012 17:06 DannyJ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 17:02 Defacer wrote:
Romney. What the fuck is he even doing in this election?
Remember the dudes and crazy bitch he ran against?
Siiiiiiiiiggggggh .... yeah.
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On August 13 2012 15:20 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 13:27 RenSC2 wrote:
tl;dr:
For the economy: successful investment > unsuccessful investment > no investment.
For you: successful investment > no investment > unsuccessful investment.
The government needs to worry about the economy more than you and should make policies to encourage (or even force) investment and redistribution of wealth. Weeeeeeel, in the sort run, sure, bad investment is better than none, but in the long run I'd rather see money spent on useful things (or not spent at all) rather than chucked away. There are always plenty of useful things to spend money on - the 'something is better than nothing' excuse is just that - an excuse to be lazy and chuck money away rather than take the time and effort to spend it on something worthwhile.
How is a failed investment "chucking money away"? The money still goes into the economy, just as it would if the investment was successful.
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On August 13 2012 15:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 12:54 xDaunt wrote:On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch. The man's budget is going to completely alienate every moderate and democrat, and even some left-leaning Republicans. I really don't think this guy was a very good choice.
Probably if they knew what was in it.
But the Republicans have successfully campaigned on debt fetishism, and that Obama, not Bush is the cause.
I wouldn't be so sure that this election is won because of policy.
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On August 13 2012 19:20 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2012 15:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:On August 13 2012 12:54 xDaunt wrote:On August 13 2012 12:13 Signet wrote:On August 13 2012 11:44 ContrailNZ wrote:
As someone not in America, i think Ryan as VP has basically ended the election for Romney.
The real swing voters don't fall for the lies / rhetoric from both sides. They will see a big debt problem and are probably not those that would greatly benefit from either Obama's or Romney's plans.
I think in choosing Ryan, Romney has chosen to lose some swing voters (which are rare in today's polarized environment) in hopes that conservatives will simply turn out in higher numbers than liberals/Democrats. Putting Ryan on the ticket gives them something to vote for, in addition to voting against Obama. Whether it will be successful, I have no idea. But it's worth noting that, for at least the past month, Obama has been getting well over 300 electoral votes on poll tracker/forecast sites like Five Thirty Eight or Election Projection. In fact his re-election odds have grown to over 70% according to the former site. The Romney campaign probably senses that they have become the clear underdogs, and decided to go with a high risk / high reward strategy, which is arguably the correct thing to do if you're expected to lose anyway. Ha... funny enough Nate Silver wrote a piece about this very idea. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/ I don't buy the argument that Ryan will alienate moderates. He is representative for a fairly pro-democrat district and carried it fairly easily even in 2008. Just watch. The man's budget is going to completely alienate every moderate and democrat, and even some left-leaning Republicans. I really don't think this guy was a very good choice. Probably if they knew what was in it. But the Republicans have successfully campaigned on debt fetishism, and that Obama, not Bush is the cause. I wouldn't be so sure that this election is won because of policy.
It may very well be about policy, but that doesn't mean people actually understand policy.
YouGov asked 1000 prospective voters “how the outcome of this fall’s presidential election will affect America over the next four years. Regardless of which candidate you personally support, what effect do you think the election outcome will have on the federal budget deficit?” The response options were “much higher if Obama is reelected” (selected by 35% of the sample), “somewhat higher if Obama is reelected” (11%), “no difference” (36%), “somewhat higher if Romney is elected” (5%), and “much higher if Romney is elected” (12%).
The distribution of responses to this question is a testament to the political effectiveness of Republicans like Ryan and Tea Party activists, who have been loudly bewailing the escalation of the federal debt since Barack Obama became president. Democrats’ counterargument that recent outsized budget deficits reflect fallout from the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, the Bush tax cuts, and the Iraq War seems to have been much less persuasive. Nor have they made much headway, at least so far, in convincing the public that the Republican budget plan authored by Ryan and endorsed by Romney would actually exacerbate the deficit by slashing the taxes of top income earners.
...
The strongest relationship, by far, was between people’s expectations about the budget deficit and their expectations about their own taxes. However, the direction of this relationship was precisely the opposite of what straightforward fiscal logic would suggest: people who expected higher taxes under Obama also expected a bigger budget deficit under Obama, other things being equal, while those who expected higher taxes under Romney also expected a bigger budget deficit under Romney. This peculiar association was strongest among people who were relatively uninformed about politics; but it was easily the most important single determinant of deficit expectations even among people with above-average levels of political information.
Expectations about the federal deficit were somewhat less strongly related to expectations about overall economic growth. People who thought the economy would grow more robustly under Obama thought the deficit would be larger under Romney, and vice versa. (Not surprisingly, expectations about relative economic growth were themselves strongly skewed by partisan loyalties; 47% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans expected higher growth under their party’s candidate, while only 11% of each group expected higher growth under the other party’s candidate.) People’s partisan attachments also had a substantial direct effect on their expectations about the deficit, even after taking statistical account of all these other factors.
Source
There's a lot more there, but the gist is most people don't actually understand policy. They get a snippet from their coworker who walked in on his wife watching Fox News/MSNBC/CNN while they were talking about it.
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EPT
