GordonGecko
President
"So, to review, the key recent development is that Romney is poised to lose a race he should by all rights be winning, and conservatives are poised to blame this loss on his ideological moderation. (He not only gave people health care, he wants credit for it!). Against this backdrop, the rationale for the Ryan pick strikes me as pretty clear: Ryan is the way Romney and his aides escape blame for their now-likely defeat—blame which would be vicious and unrelenting—and pin it in on conservatives instead. With only minor historical revisions, they will be able to tell a story about how Romney was keeping the race close through early August, at which point the party’s conservative darling joined the ticket and sent the poll numbers into steady decline.
According to this narrative, the campaign will merely be guilty of a political misdemeanor—being bullied by conservatives into a lousy running mate—not the felony of strategically miscalculating against a historically weak incumbent (which is where the existing storyline was headed). That’s a plea bargain any right-minded politico would take, even if they didn’t consciously consider it in those terms. Moreover, there’s a whiff of Pascal’s Wager to the whole gambit: God (in this case, political salvation through ideological extremism) may not exist. But you don’t lose anything by pretending he does. And, who knows, he may surprise you!
Better still, this won’t just be good for Romney’s historical reputation, and for the future career prospects of his campaign team. It will be good for the entire GOP. Pre-Ryan, a Romney loss would have led to the nomination of a Neanderthal in 2016—someone, like Rick Santorum, who could say he warned the party against a candidate too moderate to take on Obama. Post-Ryan, a Romney loss will be read as a Goldwater-esque act of ideological self-immolation, which the party must resist at all costs if it hopes to win another election. Paradoxically, the Ryan pick is both selfish and selfless at the same time."
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106035/picking-ryan-isnt-bold-its-highly-risk-averse
According to this narrative, the campaign will merely be guilty of a political misdemeanor—being bullied by conservatives into a lousy running mate—not the felony of strategically miscalculating against a historically weak incumbent (which is where the existing storyline was headed). That’s a plea bargain any right-minded politico would take, even if they didn’t consciously consider it in those terms. Moreover, there’s a whiff of Pascal’s Wager to the whole gambit: God (in this case, political salvation through ideological extremism) may not exist. But you don’t lose anything by pretending he does. And, who knows, he may surprise you!
Better still, this won’t just be good for Romney’s historical reputation, and for the future career prospects of his campaign team. It will be good for the entire GOP. Pre-Ryan, a Romney loss would have led to the nomination of a Neanderthal in 2016—someone, like Rick Santorum, who could say he warned the party against a candidate too moderate to take on Obama. Post-Ryan, a Romney loss will be read as a Goldwater-esque act of ideological self-immolation, which the party must resist at all costs if it hopes to win another election. Paradoxically, the Ryan pick is both selfish and selfless at the same time."
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106035/picking-ryan-isnt-bold-its-highly-risk-averse
