the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

Reid v Romney I like because it's like Spy v Spy but Mormon v Mormon – the Mormon angle is the only thing I enjoy about this election, you guys can probably tell.

lol wut http://jalopnik.com/5933877/paul-ryan-used-to-drive-the-wienermobile

Private sector experience.

well, his only other job was at a McDonald's, so it makes sense that he likes processed meat

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/netiquette-what-do-you-do-when-youre-an-accident

so I guess the Beltway betting match now becomes who "reforms" SS firt in 2012: Romney or Obama

cnn currently playing reaction from Some Guy On Youtube who has very.... long..... pauses.... between.... sentences....... and thinks ryan is very articulate and is a great pick

well that settles it

no ones touching ss, its really mysterious to me why politicians even pretend they're going to, its such a wildly unpopular move

apologies for quoting POLITICO playbook but

The drawbacks: Limited executive and foreign-policy experience. Ready on Day 1 – really?

it's a fair question, didn't they learn last time that the #1 job of the vp pick was to be ready to be president? that hasn't changed!

no question we should be grateful for Wolf Blitzer's wisdom:

On CNN, at about 1:35 this morning, Wolf Blitzer was already warning Democrats not to get too cocky in the face of Paul Ryan's mighty intellect. "In 1980," Wolf told us, "Democrats were high-fiving when the Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan."

^i was there, bullshit

anyway as someone wrote on Salon yesterday this is a Dole-Kemp pick, not likely to work unless there's a crash.

Dems already torn to shreads by the Carter-Kennedy fracas.

*shreds

Man I will never stop lolling @ tim pawlenty....what a loser

Haven't gone through all the Corner rah-rahing (there's a lot of it), but here's the lead editorial:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313728/just-ticket-editors

Betting that Sullivan cuts his vacation short--I don't think he'll be disciplined enough to leave the requisite outrage and hysteria in the hands of interns. (He'll especially be all over the beholden-to-Bill-Kristol angle.)

Ryan as cheerleader for Mitt Romney in his speech was very awkward.

Mr. Romney, who is not known for routinely exhibiting physical warmth, patted Mr. Ryan on the back 10 times after his running mate bounded onto the stage. When Mr. Ryan finished his remarks, Mr. Romney whispered a word into his ear. “Perfect,” he said.

Drawing upon all my lip-reading skills, I was sure that Mitt whispered "That was really a big fucking deal!"

so if this is the 2004 campaign in reverse, ryan is our john edwards

Sex scandal being that he'll be caught screwing Ayn's corpse.

i think this is a liiitle more dangerous that you guys are making out. it's certainly "clarifying" as they say. instead of being a referendum on the president (again, scare quotes), they'd like to run on a referendum on the whole public sector. i'm honestly not sure how that one goes these days.

point of detail: ryan's plan is not to take away medicare, it's to 'strengthen medicare' by leaving it alone for people who already have it, and take it away from everybody else! given the attitudes of old ppl these days, well...

well, the president himself has spoken of "reforming" Social Security and Medicare. We'll see how well he scares Dems into rejoining him.

So a Mormon and a guy that lives his life according to the teachings of a Russian atheist. How's that evangelical vote coming along?

On top of that, he's a Catholic which, believe it or not, is still looked up as distasteful in plenty of evangelical sectors.

*upon

so Ryan supported Medicare Part D, TARP, and the GM & Chrysler bailouts ...and somehow he's a Tea Party darling?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/11/us/politics/ryan-hunting/ryan-hunting-articleLarge.jpg

which one is Ryan

l: gop, r: poor

goole otm, id feel a lot more sanguine abt this if the hillllaaaaarious liberal twitter blog sphere wasnt falling over themselves to say what a bad choice Ryan is

otoh the fact that nro thinks its a good choice indicates the opposite so

really the only person you can trust to have an evenhanded and thoughtful take on the situation is Jennifer Rubin

that he's trying to already trying to nix the ryan budget as subject matter is stunning. If someone asked Mitt "name five specific things you've done that show why you should be president" I don't know if he could do it.

yeah ill wait for her column

Romneycare, Bain Capital, the Ryan budget -- what's left for Mitt to disown? his hair?

hearing ryan walk through mitt's accomplishments was hilarious for that reason. You could feel the audience's disorientation hearing "bain capital" said in a positive light.

I happened to catch a glimpse of cable news a couple hours ago and goddamn CNN anchor called Ayn Ryan a "deficit hawk." The guy who voted for the Bush tax cuts, Bush wars, the prescription drug benefit...and the auto bailout.

yeah that was one of the salient parts of the lizza thing in the nyer - either the profile or his postscript today - the mention that ryan tried to disown his cooperation w/those programmes, being something he regrets

i understand ryan was kristol's choice, so . . .

literally astounding that bill kristol was right about something

On April 29, 2012, The New York Times reported,

WASHINGTON — Representative Paul D. Ryan strolls the halls of Capitol Hill with the anarchist band Rage Against the Machine pounding through his earbuds.

At 6:30 every morning, he leads an adoring cast of young, conservative members of Congress through exercise sessions in front of a televised trainer barking out orders. For fun, Mr. Ryan noodles catfish, catching them barehanded with a fist down their throats.

He may be, as a friend described him, “a hunting-obsessed gym rat,” but Mr. Ryan, 42, of Wisconsin, has become perhaps the most influential policy maker in the Republican Party, its de facto head of economic policy, intent on a fundamental transformation of the federal government.

[…]

That is not bad for a man who was once just another minion on Capitol Hill, working for a research group, then for a member of Congress, and moonlighting as a waiter at the Hill hangout Tortilla Coast and as a personal trainer at a gym. Co-workers at the conservative policy group Empower America admonished him for hanging his workout clothes out to dry at work rather than laundering them.

a bull on parade, you might say

tortilla coast is the worst

Hahah how sad. The dude belongs in OC, he'd fit right in.

we are still living in a world where Obama offered to cut Medicare and Soc Sec, yeah? or did i miss something?

Very different reaction to Ryan than to Palin from the Democrats. As I'm sure many of you have (yes, yes, I know, not you), I've been getting e-mails all afternoon--four or five so far. Last time, the response to Palin was very tentative for a few days; it would have been very risky to come out aggressively against a woman, especially after the acrimonious campaign against Clinton, and I think there was genuine befuddlement as to how to deal with her. So they hung back, and over the next week or so McCain caught up, then edged ahead. After that, everything started to turn Obama's way. But whether out of confusion, a certainty that Palin was eventually going to implode, or something in between, I count their discipline in not overreacting to Palin as one of the smartest things Obama's side did during the campaign. This time, they're piling on immediately. Probably the right thing to do, but it does carry a risk.

we didn't know who Palin was, we already know who Ryan is