Both Sides Are Happy with Ryan as Veep
After what felt like years of relentless speculation, we finally know that Mitt picked Paul Ryan to be his vice president. Amazingly, both the Republicans and the Democrats seem to be happy with his choice.
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The Republicans are more than happy with the decisions to choose Ryan. He's young, but he has experience, and he's tapped into the base of the party more than Romney is. As Talking Points Memo's Evan McMorris-Santoro writes, conservatives "have been waiting for the moderate Romney shoe to drop," and Ryan's finally done it. Ryan gives them a hardcore conservative with strong economic values who's in touch with the base of the party. As Daily Intel's Jonathan Chait points out, as Ryan goes, so goes the Republican party:
If he doesn’t want something to happen, it won’t happen (say, several bipartisan deals to reduce the deficit that he squashed.) If he wants something to happen, however foolhardy (like putting the entire House GOP caucus on record for his radical budget plan despite a certain veto) it will happen. It is Ryan’s party.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are practically overcome with joy over the Ryan pick. They've campaigned against him in the past, so he's a familiar target, and his budget plan calls for "the end of Medicare as we know it." Where could they go wrong. An Obama campaign official told Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings that Ryan is "pretty smart," but still called the choice insane. "[Ryan] should be way out of his league at this water depth," he said. Two Democrats who spoke to The Hill's Niall Stanage and Amie Parnes were considerably more excited. "I haven't been this happy waking up since I was 12 and got a BMX for Christmas," said one. "I think we're all licking our chops this morning," said another. "The president has spent the last several months attacking the Republican budget and who better to be the VP pick than Ryan? Fits into our narrative in the best possible way."
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The Obama campaign was quick to release an ad attacking the Ryan/Romney ticket, focusing mainly on their problems with Ryan's budget plan:
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At least they could all agree on something.