Mitty's selection of Ryan as his running mate makes it clear that, although the execrable Karl Rove has no official role with the campaign (at least none that we know of), his ideas will now drive it. So far, every ploy Mitty has tried to gain an edge over the President has failed. He has, at various times, tried (among others) running on the economy; his own "business experience"; health care reform, and just being Not Obama. None of it has worked. If any trend has emerged in the past couple of weeks, it is that the President is becoming the clear favorite. Mitty is sinking under the sheer weight of his personal tax avoidance schemes; his "business experience" (consisting principally of stripping corporations of their assets and firing their employees and/or off-shoring the remaining jobs); his compulsive lying about everything; his utter lack of any guiding principle other than his own election, and the fact that, basically, he's just a snotty, privileged rich kid. Show of hands; who likes snotty, privileged rich kids?
Dubyah, when he ran the first time, had pretended to be an ecumenical conservative, reaching out to independents and sympathetic Democrats as he claimed to have done as governor of Texas (actually, there's not a dime's worth of different between Republicans and the kind of Texas Democrats Dubyah reached out to, but I digress). In 2004, Rove ran a "base" campaign. Dubyah wouldn't even pretend to be bipartisan and he would "energize" the precursor of the "tea party" by harping on "social issues". He would simply turn out more of "his" voters than the Democrats could of theirs. It worked like a charm, helped by some fairly obvious efforts, particularly in Ohio, at voter suppression and disenfranchisement. And that, it appears to me, is how Mitty is going to run his show, according to the Gospel according to Karl.
The sole benefit Ryan brings to the table is that the Teabagger/Lynch Mob crowd love him (in spite of his having supported loyally Dubyah's every effort to balloon the deficit). His "plan" is something the like of which hasn't been seen since Coolidge and perhaps even before that. It boils down to "make sure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and, oh yes, we'll burden them with the cost of our efforts to get out of this hole we dug the country into!" Although he has paid no more than lip service to the "social issues" so beloved of the TB/LM bunch, Mitty has prostituted himself more than sufficiently at the altars of those particular gods.
But what Ryan does NOT bring is any support from Independents or Moderate-Conservative Democrats. There appears to be no appetite whatsoever in those quarters for repealing the New Deal (and Wilson's and TR's reforms besides). And the polls have shown pretty clearly that Mitty's strategy of declaring "war" on women, Hispanics, Blacks, Muslims, GLBT people, and practically anybody else who isn't a middle-aged, rich, straight, white guy has driven away Independents in droves. There weren't that many of them to begin with.
What Mitty/Ryan will do now is concentrate on "energizing" their base. Look for the Republican National Convention to be the sort of event Leni Riefenstahl used to film. Look for the anti-Obama lie/smear campaign to get even hotter. Look for the burner under the stew of RW bile to be turned up to high boil for the duration of the campaign (or at least until the money runs out because even the fat cats have a limited appetite for throwing good money after bad). Look also for an even more energetic emphasis on the on-going effort to make it difficult, if not impossible, for hundreds of thousands of likely Obama voters to vote, particularly in the swing states. In Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, any swing state that is controlled by the TB/LM crowd, all I can say is, I hope to God the Democrats are already hard at work making certain that as many people as possible are adequately credentialed and will be turned out to vote this fall. The 'pubs are doing everything they can, legally or otherwise, to prevent it.
This is likely to be a disgusting fall campaign. It is likely to be that because of Mitty and Dubyah's brain's idea of how to win elections. There are two things that will make it at all bearable. First and foremost is a solid victory for the President (and return of Congress to Democratic control). Second is the sheer delight we winners will have in watching the 'pubs go picnicking on each other in the aftermath.
