Ryan is supposed to energize the base of the Republican Party, but I don't actually know what that means. Will it mean that conservatives who were not excited about Romney and therefore weren't going to vote in Nov. are now going to vote for him? I doubt it because while conservatives may be lukewarm on Romney they are not lukewarm on Obama and would vote against Obama no matter who got the GOP nomination. So Romney is not likely to pick up a lot of votes here. Does it mean that Romney will get more donations from Conservatives as a result of picking Ryan? Maybe, but Romney is already raising a lot more money than Obama for all the good it's doing him. Will it mean more campaign volunteers? Here it may actually help him. Romney is fairly deficient when it comes to having people knock on doors and make phone calls, especially where it counts. A million volunteers in Texas wouldn't help Romney- he's already going to win Texas. He needs volunteers in places like OH, FL, MI, WI, CO, VA. Places that could go either way. But I have my doubts even on this. In polls, people already say they know enough about the candidates. No one is likely to be introduced to Romney in the August before the election unless he or she lived under a rock for the last 18 months and the subearth types are not likely voters. So Ryan energizing the base doesn't really mean a lot. Elections are won in the middle.
And here is why I think that Ryan is a poor choice.
1) Ryan doesn't help in any major state and actively hurts in one very important state. Wisconsin has ten electoral votes so even if Romney takes WI as a result of this pick he's only up 20 electoral votes (the 10 he got and the same 10 he took from Obama). The idea that other midwestern states are going to be more likely to vote for Romney is bizarre. No one in Ohio cares where Ryan is from unless Ryan is from Ohio and then only maybe. Half the people who lose local elections in Ohio are from there. Most people vote for people they agree with, not accidents of birth. However, Ryan really hurts Romney in Florida. Ryan has called Social Security a ponzi scheme, in the past supported private accounts for Social Security and wants to make serious changes to Medicare. When I heard Romney had picked Ryan one of my first thoughts was that Romney had just lost Florida's 29 electoral votes which cost him almost a sixty points in the electoral college.
2) As other commentators have noted this ticket is one for rich, white males. Romney was already going to win that group. Ryan's politics are not attractive to minority groups in general. Romney has ceded the field for the Latino vote, the Black vote, the Gay vote, and Women's vote. These groups are going to be critical in swing states- Florida for instance, but also, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado. In a close election stealing even a few of these votes means way more than getting all the conservatives in Ohio to vote for you. They were going to anyway. When he loses Latinos and seniors in Florida, his campaign will be wondering where it went wrong. It was here: the Romney campaign had to fend off Republican challengers in the primary for so long by proving Mitt's conservativism that it forgot that that's not where general elections are won. If either party could win with its base alone, it wouldn't be much of an election.
3) Ryan is a policy wonk and most voters are not. His main credential for the job is that he wrote a budget that is highly contentious. Voters are not going to wade through the Ryan budget. They're only going to take a few things away at best. He's for fiscal responsibility; he wants to cut taxes and cut spending, (that's that the Romney camp is going to report) or that his cuts hurt seniors and the needy while helping rich people like say, Mitt Romney (which the Obama campaign will most certainly say). And who they choose to believe is largely about how to fit Ryan into the narrative that they already have in their heads about Romney. And since the Obama campaign has been extremely successful at painting Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat, guess which version of Ryan's budget they're likely to accept?
In short, anyone who likes Ryan was probably already going to vote for Romney. Whether voters enthusiastically vote Romney or hold their noses and vote Romney, it's is the same thing mathematically. Romney needs 270 votes in the electoral college. Ryan doesn't get him there.
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