Saint Paul

Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday morning. A previous blog post predicted him or Tim Pawlenty/Bob Portman to win the veepstakes. Another previous blog post analyzed Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity".

One quick bizarre insight: William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, has predicted the Republican Vice Presidential Nominees two years in a row! Yes! This means that the editor, months before the 2008 Republican Convention, rightly foresaw that a certain Grizzly Mom from Alaska would be on the ticket! Fascinating...

Now back to Paul Ryan. Personally, I would love to work out with the Wisconsin congressman. People on the hill constantly gossip about his sweaty morning regimens- specifically P90X. Also, when he was a rookie in his twenties he paid the bills by working part time at a 24/7 Sports and Fitness Club. Hence his beautiful physique. And the ladies are swooning.

For hackneyed talking points about the veep pick, I recommend visiting Politico, NYTimes, WashPost, or the Economist. Or for more conservative sources, the Weekly Standard or National Review. Here are some of my own personal thoughts about Mitt's decision:

• Paul Ryan is one of the leading Republican Party ideologues. A self-proclaimed Randist, he fervently analyzes fiscal issues and offers bold conservative proposals to fixing the looming national deficit and debt. (Note: "Path to Prosperity"). So what does this mean? It means ample excitement for the conservative base, but hesitance among the %5 of the U.S. population who call themselves "independents".
• About riling up the base: markedly more people are attending Romney events. A big boon to the lacking esprit de corps pre-VP pick. 
• The downside to choosing a radical fiscal conservative is hesitance among independents. During a voter registration effort, my twin sister overheard someone definitively switch back to the Obama camp upon hearing Ryan was nominated. The New York Times and several other publications have reported the same case happening across the country: moderate voters are turned off by the whole tax-cut/Medicare 180 that Ryan proposes. This trend is not statistically supported, but might wring some truth. 
• Furthermore, Romney needs at least one-third of the Hispanic population's vote. He currently polls at %27 favorability among Hispanics. Marco Rubio would have fixed this problem. Ryan can't. 
• The Ryan pick offers a stark referendum on Medicare, taxes, and entitlements. This is good for Obama, who can turn away from defending his economic record and play the Buffet-Rule game, i.e. chastising tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires. This means the Romney camp can't get away with attacking the unemployment rate 24/7- they have to also deal with the radical Ryan budget.
• Nate Silver of the New York Times wrote a recent blog post about how VP nominees sway their home state vote. Paul Ryan comes from Janesville, Wisconsin; according to Silver, this will most likely move the state 2 points towards being red. Right now Obama has a 6 point polling advantage in Wisconsin, in 2008 he won the state by 15 points. 
• In terms of demeanor, Ryan is Obama's counterpart on the other side of the aisle. The Wisconsin congressman is poised, elegant, polite, well-spoken, and of noble character. He is not like Palin, Biden, or Bill Clinton- he cheeks would not flush red as he low-balled a lunatic pundit on national television. Instead, he is wonkish, a handsome dork who precociously chairs the House Budget Committee. Neeedless to say, Ryan isn't timid or boring on the stump like Bob Portman or Tim Pawlenty. He successfully casts the Obama administration in a gloomy light, and elicits cheers from fed up right wing crowds.
• My last thought is of national security. Neither Republican on the 2012 ticket has served in the armed forces or done foreign policy work. Sure, you can count Romney's Bain experience as "global business expertise". It's a chicken excuse. China, the Middle East, the EU- this is the stuff that matters. Not outsourcing some company to overseas manufacturing. For better or for worse, however, American citizens have tunnel vision that focuses on the economy. Reference Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan. Syria and Iran are like toothpicks on a dinner table where the main entrees are unemployment and budget cuts. 

Now to finalize this post, here are some eye candy pictures of our potential future Vice President:

Reaching for a gun? More like a calculator.

Making Grandmas happy since 1970.

Wonkish hands.

Political Animals Round 2

Okay- USA's Political Animals is an official must-watch. Episodes 2 and 3 were pretty riveting. Although the show still doesn't live up to Sorkinesque dialogue, it made me think of a two key feminist questions:

1. Is ambition always better suited on males?

2. Would a Hillary Clinton campaign poll stronger without Bill by her side?

Also, The Kills did great with the soundtrack:

Small Businesses

My airplane snobdom- or just my snobdom in general- loathes cramming next to two people on a cheap continental flight. The constant engine roar and muffled coughs, runny noses, chit chatter, is irking, let alone the few lucky half-inches spared for personal space.

But this flight I sat next to a gregarious small business owner (alias Bob) who turned the travel experience into a warm conversation and Finance 101 lecture. Bob offered a few insights/business mantras that undermined (subtly or unsubtly) the liberal economic currents which come to epitomize Arlington political life. Coming from a family of public servants, military, or multinational/hitech company workers, small business is something we rarely talk about.

Business Insider presents 18 insights into American small businesses. Here are the ones I found most interesting:

• There are 28 million small businesses in the U.S. -- which outnumber corporations 1162 to 1

• Small businesses employ 57% of the country's private workforce

• Small businesses pay 44% of U.S. payroll

• It takes just 6 days to start a business in the US, compared to a whopping 38 days in China

• Small businesses create 13x more patents per employee than large patenting companies

• 60 to 80% of all new jobs come from small businesses

Back when Microsoft was a minnow in a shark pool.

Voter ID

Several days ago, my twin sister and I spent a three hour layover at the Philadelphia airport. This got me thinking about the 33 Republican states that are in the process of passing Voter ID Laws, which require all citizens to carry a government issued photo ID to the poll. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, only 8% of white voters lack photo ID compared to 25% of black voters. As of today, http://www.gallup.com/poll/politics.aspx states that 87% of blacks will vote for Obama while only 37% of whites will support the President. Do the math.

Policies like this make me angry- the nominal incentive is to decrease voter fraud, yet in some states only ten legitimate cases of fraud have been reported in the last decade. DECADE I repeat. A Republican governor- I forget which state he leads- had a fit of candidness and openly admitted that these laws (if upheld by the Supreme Court) will deliver Pennsylvania to Romney in the general election.

A 2008 ruling by the Supreme Court ordained Voter ID legislation just. This precedent would make it easy for the five right of center justices to uphold the status quo. Both parties have and will continue to use these tactics unless a burst of sanity is electroshocked into Washington.

Nate Silver of the New York Times always delivers ingenious analysis; here is his take on the laws:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/measuring-the-effects-of-voter-identification-laws/

Here is another good New York Times story on the case:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us/politics/tougher-voter-id-laws-set-off-court-battles.html?_r=1&hp

Checks and balances

Political Animals

Last night, USA Network launched a series called Political Animals that documents the life of a fictional Secretary of State and her family- by and large an allegory of the Clinton dynasty.

I highly recommend it. If you like the West Wing, watch it, but don't expect its dialogue to surpass the wit of Aaron Sorkin. In any case, the show illustrates the pros and cons of leading a successful life in the political spotlight, and casts a riveting tale of female dominance in a male playing field.

Girl power. 

*** PLOT SPOILER ***
Sigourney Weaver, who plays Secretary of State Elaine Hammond, confides her wish to run for President again to a secret service agent. Hillary 2016?? I'm thinking yes!

It's not just Democrats...

who are pressuring Romney to release his tax returns. Look at what these leading Republican figures have to say:

"There's obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say 'Have at it'"

- Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, on ABC This Week

“I do not know why, given that Mitt Romney knew the day that [John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest,”


- George Will, newspaper columnist, on ABC's This Week

"He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It's crazy...You gotta release six, eight, 10 years of back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two."


-William Kristol, Weekly Standard columnist, on FOX News Sunday

“If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong,”


- Alabama Governor Robert Bentley speaking at the National Governor's Association

Path to Prosperity or Decline?: The Ryan Budget

A few months ago the Republican controlled House passed Congressman Paul Ryan's idea of a budget plan, idealistically titled the "Path to Prosperity". The plan never passed in the Senate, but nevertheless addresses some core policy problems facing the country:

• reforming the complex tax code
• reducing the deficit
• reducing debt as a share of the economy
• reforming Medicare 

How did the CBO calculate this? 

This comes with lots of hidden assumptions...

1. Medicare

• Ryan claims that annual healthcare spending per household has increased fiftyfold since 1960 ($520/household) to 2012 ($25,300/household). Do these estimates account for inflation? 
• 10,000 baby boomers are added to Medicare everyday (wow- not good!)
• This screenshot of a House Budget Committee YouTube video accurately illustrates the status quo:

(Taxpayers give money to Medicare, Medicare reimburses providers, providers give care to patients.)

• The status quo disregards the quality of provider care
• Ryan ensures no changes for citizens 55 years or older
• This screenshot from the same video shows how the Ryan budget would enact patient-centered medicare where patients choose from a host of competitive providers, theoretically lowering costs and increasing care

• Poorer recipients receive more federal support while wealthier recipients receive less- a fair maxim

2. Tax Reform

• Reduces the corporate tax rate to 26% 
• Lowers the "individual rate that small businesses pay" to 23%
• Reforms the tax code to be "competitive, fair, and simple"
• Divides tax code into two brackets: lower bracket taxed at 10%, upper bracket taxed at 25%
• Big Problem: Offers no solutions to close/fix existing loopholes

Problems:

Paul Krugman

"And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit — but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes."

~New York Times

Ezra Klein

"That’s a lot of numbers. But it’s also clarifying. The big cut here isn’t to health care for old people, though that gets the headlines. It’s to health care for poorer Americans. The biggest category of cuts is “everything else,” which shrinks to implausibly low levels, and Ryan, to my knowledge, has never detailed, even in broad strokes, how he gets it that low. But since he’s opposed to further defense cuts — he in fact raises spending on defense in the next 10 years — it seems inevitable that the non-defense side of “everything else” would have to shrink considerably, and that means cutting quite a bit from income supports and veterans’ benefits and infrastructure.

Then there’s the whole question of where Ryan gets the $6.2 trillion he’ll need to fill the hole in his tax plan."

~Washington Post

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/man-plan_648570.html?page=3

This is an interesting article on Paul Ryan- obviously biased, but interesting nonetheless. His politeness is certainly respectable. Expecting to write a post that dissects his fiscal plan. 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/campaign-altogether-old_648556.html

Also, another Weekly Standard article that grazed my attention ^. William Kristol is always nice to see on the news, he has a steady demeanor and upbeat vibe. Interesting how he wants to see a hypothetical President Romney do something as revolutionary as FDR. 

Welcome to my blog! As a political wonk and enthusiast I enjoy breaking down what's going on in Washington. This blog will serve as a platform to voice my personal views but also contrast opinions held by both sides of the aisle.

First item of business: Who will Romney choose as VP?

Condi seemed like a good way to get rid of negative publicity surrounding Bain- no way Jose  she'll be on the ticket.

What an elegant face! Paul Ryan would fortify Romney's  economic credentials and offer the Romney team a viable and clear fiscal path to sell to voters. The Congressman's plan, which cuts heavily on entitlements and lowers tax rates into two distinct brackets, would also appeal to the conservative base. 

Rob Portman would certainly give Mittens an advantage in Ohio- a critical swing state. Downsides: he advised Bush junior and is the antithesis of crowd-exciter.

Paws, on the other hand, has name recognition from the primaries and a stellar record in Minnesota. Although Minnesota runs consistently blue in the generals, Paws would counterbalance Mittster's blatant eliteness. After all, he was the son of a truck driver and attended a state university. Downside: antithesis of crowd pleaser as well.

Other potential veeps: Governor Jindal, Governor McDonnell, Senator Marco Rubio. 

My guess: Either Portman, Ryan, or Pawlenty. Dullness at the podium is not necessarily a problem considering the tragic failures of Palin 2008. Let's see how this plays out! The Romney team said a candidate will likely be chosen and publicized this upcoming week.