“Why Romney Chose Ryan”

The Games are over, let THE Game begin.

Not that running for President of the United States hasn’t become a full-time job for the current resident of the Oval Office…well, except for his other job, golf - or his third job, jabbing. But now that Romney has made his vice-presidential choice public, the real blood, sweat and tears will begin to flow. As Obama said, “bring a knife”…that’s the good old Chicago Way, especially if you’re agin guns and such.

Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan gets my vote. Before this it was my reluctant vote. Lining up Romney's deep and wide executive experience, his success and well-honed team-player skills against the thin-skinned poseur/loner we have now, it was never really a question for me. But with Ryan on the ticket? Financial reform here we come!

Either way the vote goes in November, Ryan will remain in office. He’s running for his Congressional seat in his home district in Wisconsin, a seat he retained even as Obama carried Wisconsin in the 2008 election. He registered to run in June, I think, and he probably thought his chances of being chosen by Romney were only middling. I expect he’ll do this whole-heartedly, but winning will entail a wrenching farewell to a chamber where he struggled long and hard to educate his fellow Congressmen in economics. This video, from early August, is a good preview of what you'll see on the campaign trail, and what I've been watching for a while now:

Paul Ryan is articulate, handsome, and devoutly Christian.. He’s been a good son and family man. He’s so clean he squeaks — but don’t worry, they’ll find some grade school caper he was in on. Romney and Ryan are hard to rile, but we can rely on the Dem smear machine to give its all in the attempt to break them. The stakes are mortally high this time around.

From Kim Strassel’s essay, Why Romney Chose Ryan

Mitt Romney did much more this weekend than announce a running mate. He unveiled a significant change in strategy. The 2012 election is now a choice, not just a referendum.

[…]

Mr. Romney’s choice of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, one of the party’s star reformers, is an attempt to break out of the stalemate, change the dynamic. It was foremost a shrewd acknowledgment on Mr. Romney’s part that his path to the White House is going to take more than pointing out the obvious. He needs to run on bold ideas, as Mr. Ryan has, and convince Americans those ideas are the way to prosperity.

In fairness…

The Romney campaign had the elements in place. It’s taken some time, but Mr. Romney today is sporting a fairly bold reform agenda, from his tax cuts to his Medicare reforms, to his vow to end ObamaCare. And the candidate has been dutifully repeating that this election is a choice between two very different futures for the country. Yet his policy and his words were largely lost amid his campaign’s intense focus on the president.

Mr. Ryan provides the crucial shift in emphasis, the opportunity to go on offense. We will now have a focus on, and explanation of, the choice between stagnation and renewal. This is what Mr. Ryan excels at—not just crafting ideas, but explaining them in a positive and serious way. This ability is why the congressman—despite his supposedly extremist reform blueprint and budget (says the left)—has continued to win a district that in 2008 went for Mr. Obama.

This material is from an editorial by Kim Strassel that ran in the Wall Street Journal. However, I accessed it via Real Clear Politics, here. The editorial link is probably more stable since RCP changes its material on a regular basis.

Ms. Strassel is an opinion essayist at WSJ; she writes their Potomac Watch section. I generally like her point of view.