Mitt Romney chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate in November’s presidential election:
Mitt Romney has taken a rare political gamble in an attempt to change the direction of the US presidential campaign, unveiling Paul Ryan, a radically conservative young congressman, as his running mate.
The Republican challenger for the White House announced Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the 42-year-old author of the party’s drastic plan to slash public spending, as his prospective vice president.
Appearing together at a rally in Norfolk, Virginia, the pair attacked Barack Obama’s “record of failure” and claimed that they were “America’s comeback team”.
Standing in front of USS Wisconsin, a Second World War battleship, Mr Romney hailed Mr Ryan as “an intellectual leader of the Republican Party”, adding: “He appeals to the better angels of our nature”.
“He understands the fiscal challenges facing America: our exploding deficits and crushing debt, and the fiscal catastrophe that awaits us if we don’t change course,” he told 2,000 cheering supporters.
Amid a sea of flags and placards on the dock, Mr Ryan warned the US was “running out of time” to fix its economy and said: “It is our duty to save the American dream for our children and theirs”.
Robert Wright thinks Paul Ryan is a “robot nerd”…and if you watch his acceptance speech it is hard not to disagree:
Yes, Ryan comes off as nerdier than Romney, but he doesn’t come off as much more human. They seem like two slightly different variants of the classic gladhanding candidate for high-school student-body president. Both would be on the debate team, but the Romney model would also be on the football team, whereas the Ryan model would compete in interscholastic math tournaments. Most kids at my high school didn’t especially like either type. They only voted for one of them because there was no alternative.
