GOP insiders complain that Paul Ryan pick cost Romney the election

GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan

It is not that the public professions of excitement about the Ryan selection are totally insincere. It is that many of the most optimistic Republican operatives will privately acknowledge that their views are being shaped more by fingers-crossed hope than by a hard-headed appraisal of what’s most likely to happen.

And the more pessimistic strategists don’t even feign good cheer: They think the Ryan pick is a disaster for the GOP. Many of these people don’t care that much about Romney — they always felt he faced an improbable path to victory — but are worried that Ryan’s vocal views about overhauling Medicare will be a millstone for other GOP candidates in critical House and Senate races.

It seriously doesn't make sense to me. I've been following politics for a long time. This is my 4th presidential election since adulthood and I was no stranger to them when I was growing up. And I don't see a single level on which this works for Romney.
1. A Representative, from a public perception point of "Hey, this guy could be president if the other guy keels over", is a horrible one. Senators and Governors are standard. Any idiot can be a representative. Case in point, Michele Bachmann. And this guy.
2. He's an arch-conservative... but the arch-conservatives were going to vote for Romney anyway because they hate Obama
3. Romney immediately started to distance himself from the one single thing that Ryan is known for, a controversial budget plan
4. I say one single thing, because there are only two bills Ryan has passed through Congress in years in the House, and one of them is renaming a post office.
5. He provides little to no electoral advantage for Romney, not like a Rubio or even a Portman would have.

There's not a level on which it works, and I can't figure out what the reasoning was, unless Romney actively wants to lose, unless winning was never ever the plan.

romney isn't exactly as beloved by the conservatives as everyone would have you think. sure they're going to vote for him anyway. But in our current political climate, there is one thing that matters, and it's not drawing moderates to your side. It's stirring up your base to get out and vote. with less than a 20% turnout, getting more of "your team" to show up means you win. This could very well be his strategy, stirring up conservative furor to the point that they get out in great enough numbers to defeat Obama's team.

If this is his strategy I could be wrong about my prediction of him coming out in favor of civil unions. I'm not convinced it's all that great a strategy, but given a less than 20% turn out, it could work. If even half of their base shows up because of it, that's a minimum of 10% right there.

Oftentimes we overestimate the opposition. They are human, just like us, and history is littered with the wreckage caused by the bad decisions made by the ruling classes.

Progurt wrote:There's not a level on which it works, and I can't figure out what the reasoning was, unless Romney actively wants to lose, unless winning was never ever the plan.

I think you may be on to something there. I was telling my wife the same thing. I think that the Right wing is testing the waters. I think they are seeing just how horrible a candidate they can get away with fielding. We have to remember that conservatives play the long game. They pull and pull over the course of decades and now things that were considered crazy fringe thinking are considered mainstream. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Regan today would be seen as traitors to conservatism. They know how stupid and crazy (Bachmann/Palin/Cain/Perry) they can go without connections like Bush had. They obviously eliminated any moderate voices. Now they are testing to see how extreme you can go with right wing Randian or Austrian school philosophy. There next candidate in 2016, if they do not steal this election; will be slicker and a nicer more intelligent face to a horrible ideology. Meanwhile, they are continuing to pull rightward at the state level and the left will have to do everything in its power just to get things back to some sane center.

One thing you can always count on is the the Republicans will overreach. They cannot help it. The sad thing is that in overreaching, they scoot everyone else over towards their end.

Romney had to pick Ryan since The Movement demands it. Romney's not from The Movement, so he had to "balance the ticket" with the Ryan pick.

Victory? That doesn't really matter in The Movement's way of thinking. As others have pointed out, its the long game that interests them. I read a lot of this guy for how The Movement operates:

http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/why-the-movement-is-more-dangerous-today-than-1993/

Both parties have been hollowed out by the parasites from within.

Romney is the new Kerry.