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After Romney's spokesperson stuck her foot in her butt this week, his campaign is teetering on life support. Picking Ryan would be the final nail in Romney's election coffin. Republicans can't generate one scintilla of excitement for Romney, and Romney can't win the media war against Obama's surrogates. Although the Convention will surely be a hoot and a half, the campaign is living up to its' own self-destructive pre-destination.

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it'll force the conversation toward the insanity of the Ryan budget. Which is why this is so shocking - Mitt has been trying like hell not to take a position on the issues in that budget. Now he's drawn a big ole target on himself.

Let the games begin!

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While there is a short-term and potential electoral edge in Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, it is politically risky and violates what should be the guiding principle in choosing a vice-presidential nominee: "First, do no harm." In the end, the choice may do more harm than good.

There is no doubt that Ryan is charismatic, resilient and sharp. But in his home state, it is not clear how much Wisconsinites know about him since he has never held statewide office.

One of the upsides of the Ryan pick is that it changes the campaign narrative. Romney has been taking a beating in the last few weeks. He desperately needs to shift attention in a new direction. Since the choice of a conservative firebrand like Ryan will be viewed as a daring choice, Romney may see a temporary boost to his campaign.

Unquestionably, Ryan will help Romney solidify support with staunch members of the GOP. Most of them would have supported Romney in the end regardless, but Romney wanted to assure them that he is reliable and ideologically aligned to the Republican base.

By choosing Ryan, Romney all but guaranteed that these hot-button issues would become fodder for the Obama campaign, which will present a contrasting vision of entitlement programs for Americans. It's treacherous waters to step into.

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The announcement comes at the end of a week in which Democrats continued relentless attacks on Romney over his refusal to reveal more of his tax records and which saw three polls in 24 hours showing Obama with a growing lead over his Republican challenger. A CNN/ORC International poll released Thursday showed a big jump in those who had an unfavorable opinion of the GOP candidate.

While some analysts saw Romney's choice as risky, others thought Romney had to go big. "With Mitt Romney losing ground to President Obama in the polls, I don't see the selection of Paul Ryan as 'risky,' I see the choice as bold and necessary," Republican consultant Ford O'Connell told CNN.

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House budget committee, knew some Catholics were spoiling for a fight with him Thursday when he was scheduled to speak at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution. Nearly 90 faculty members and administrators sent him a letter expressing concerns with his recent comments that his proposed budget, which includes massive spending cuts to programs for the poor but not a single tax increase, was inspired by his Catholic faith.

"I am afraid that Chairman Ryan's budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher Ayn Rand rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ," said Father Thomas Reese, a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown, in a press release Tuesday. "Survival of the fittest may be okay for Social Darwinists but not for followers of the gospel of compassion and love."

The complaints seemed to resonate with Ryan. On Thursday, he went on record denouncing Ayn Rand, who believed altruism is evil, brushing off his well-documented obsession with her as a teenage romance. Ryan told the National Review's Robert Costa: "I reject her philosophy. It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand."

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Representative Paul Ryan, also of Wisconsin, requires staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, describes Obama’s economic policies as “something right out of an Ayn Rand novel,” and calls Rand “the reason I got involved in public service.”

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." ...

At the Rand celebration he spoke at in 2005, Ryan invoked the central theme of Rand's writings when he told his audience that, "Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill ... is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict--individualism versus collectivism."

The core of the Randian worldview, as absorbed by the modern GOP, is a belief that the natural market distribution of income is inherently moral, and the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers.

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It’s understandable why Ryan would back off his former political muse. She described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages.”

Despite Ryan’s newly-professed distaste for Rand, were she alive today, she would likely applaud Ryan for his draconian GOP budget, which cuts food stamps and other programs for the poor, ends Medicare as we know it, gives $3 trillion in tax breaks for corporations and the rich, and raises taxes on the poorest Americans.

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by Breitbart

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Mitt Romney met with conservative bloggers and online writers in an effort to win over their election support and to discuss messaging for the campaign, as well as ways Romney could work more closely with bloggers. The meeting was held in secret and attendees were not allowed to write about it. Among those reportedly in attendance were representatives from the Daily Caller and Breitbart.com.

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The irony here is that during the summer of 2010 the Daily Caller and the Breitbart sites trumpeted for the weeks as very big news the fact that there once existed a private listserv where left-leaning opinion writers, activists, and academics engaged in running debates about current events.

According to Daily Caller and the Breitbart sites though, the forum, known as Journolist, represented the very epicenter of a vast left-wing cabal where news of the day was somehow filtered through the Democratic National Committee before being reported to the masses. It was a hotbed of liberal message coordination.

In 2010, The Daily Caller and the Breitbart blogs, along with the rest of the GOP Noise Machine, declared it was shocking that members of the liberal opinion press gathered online to argue, commiserate and organize.

Did we mention that representatives from Daily Caller and Breitbart.com met with Mitt Romney, in secret, to discuss campaign message coordination? And that they discussed ways the Romney campaign could work closer with the likes of Daily Caller and Breitbart.com to help disseminate opposition research on Obama? it is stunningly hypocritical for Daily Caller and Breitbart bloggers to participate directly in a secret message coordination session with a GOP candidate after having claimed message coordination was akin to treachery.

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Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, had little to say to her 2012 counterpart in a statement released nearly twelve hours after Mitt Romney made his running mate announcement.

"Congratulations to Mitt Romney on his choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate," Palin wrote in a statement, which mentioned Romney's name only four times and Ryan's name only three out of over 1,100 words. The statement was posted on her Facebook page.

Palin has endorsed candidates in races for the U.S. Senate, but has not formerly endorsed Romney. She said she voted for former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in the Alaska primary, and encouraged voters in early primary states to support him.

Palin recently made headlines after former Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview that McCain's selection of Palin was a "mistake" for 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain - a notion on which she strenuously pushed back.

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Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, will campaign together in Wisconsin on Sunday, but going forward the two members of the newly formed Republican ticket will campaign "on different tracks," a Romney campaign adviser told reporters Sunday.

"It's likely that they'll be campaigning on different tracks until we get to the convention," Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden said, adding that the campaign saw the potential for Ryan to made inroads for the Republican ticket in the Great Lakes states.

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The most important decision Mitt Romney has made in his campaign so far, the selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan for his running mate, tells us two things -- and neither bears good news for the middle class.

First, Romney has fully and unequivocally embraced the extreme Ryan budget plan. Earlier this year, he called it "marvelous" -- now he's made it his own. The Romney-Ryan plan would throw seniors under the bus and undermine their health security by ending Medicare as we know it. It would increase health care costs for seniors, including those on fixed income, by thousands of dollars a year.
The extreme plan proposed by this year's Republican ticket would bring huge tax breaks to millionaires, paid for by tax hikes on the middle class, and massive cuts to investments that strengthen the middle class -- priorities like education, health care, energy and scientific and medical research. Whether you are a college student trying to pay for school, a veteran worried about your health benefits, or a senior worried about retirement security, the Romney-Ryan plan is bad news. It would have devastating real-world effects on people young and old across the country.

Romney and Ryan have put ideology ahead of what's right. They refuse to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans under any circumstance -- not another dime, ever. Unlike the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan or the president's balanced plan to reduce the deficit that include asking everyone to pay their fair share, the Romney-Ryan budget would reduce the deficit on the backs of seniors and the middle class.

Even the U.S. Conference of Bishops admonished the Romney-Ryan plan. So did a group of nuns who recently traveled by bus across the country with the message that our budget is not just our country's fiscal map, it is our moral one. They rightly pointed out that, as it says in Corinthians, "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it, if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."

On the political front, Ryan's selection is yet another sign that Romney is running to the far right and is the most extreme conservative candidate we have had in generations. The embrace of an ideologue like Paul Ryan may appeal to the Republican Party's Tea Party base, but it will completely alienate independent voters, especially in battleground states.

Seniors in Ohio and Florida have every reason to worry what a Romney-Ryan administration would do to them when Medicare is handed over to private insurance companies and Social Security is subject to the whims of Wall Street. Voters should also consider that, even as our nation faces threats of terrorism and remains at war, for the first time in modern presidential history the Republican ticket lacks any national security credentials. It's no coincidence, then, that its views on national security are dangerous and ill-considered.

Any voter wondering about our leaders' values should consider what they do in the room when the tough decisions are on the table. While President Obama was in the Oval Office, making the toughest calls any president has had to make -- how to save the economy from depression, rescue the American auto industry, bring affordable health care to millions of Americans or take out Osama bin Laden -- Paul Ryan was in a different room.

He was sitting side-by-side with fellow House Republican ideologues John Boehner and Eric Cantor as they risked the full faith and credit of the United States, regardless of what it would mean for the middle class, jobs and women's rights.

If there ever was a question about what this election is about, today's announcement answers it. Throughout this campaign, Mitt Romney has lacked a clear vision. Now he's embraced a radical ideologue with a dangerous one. This election is absolutely a choice between two visions for our country's future. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have solidified their roles as rubber stamps for the reckless and failed economic theories of the past.

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