Neil Macdonald: Romney's running mate, definitely no Sarah Palin
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
Posted: Aug 14, 2012 8:03 PM ET
Last Updated: Aug 15, 2012 5:42 AM ET
analysis
Neil MacdonaldSenior Washington Correspondent
In 2008, John McCain chose Sarah Palin, the telegenic, Christian
conservative intellectual lightweight whose unblinking vacuity made her
the object of fascination worldwide.
She immediately eclipsed McCain, to an extent that even a majority of Republicans would likely now concede it was foolish to have picked her.
This time around, Mitt Romney has made just as radical a choice, for more or less the same reason.
Republican hard-liners harbour even more contempt for Romney than they did for the man they called "McLame" four years ago.
Both men have a history of political moderation, something now considered heresy by a thick strata of rigid conservative activists. (And unlike McCain, Romney has no military credentials on his shoulders.)
Romney is also widely regarded as terminally dull, and he's running against a president whom even the arch-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer describes as not just more likeable but "immeasurably cooler."
All of which left Romney needing to energize his party, urgently. His choice, though, was very much the un-Palin.
Congressman Paul Ryan, may be, as Romney himself puts it, "severely conservative."
But he is also one of those ever-more-precious rarities in modern politics: a muscular intellectual willing to tell voters ugly truths about the state of their nation.
She immediately eclipsed McCain, to an extent that even a majority of Republicans would likely now concede it was foolish to have picked her.
This time around, Mitt Romney has made just as radical a choice, for more or less the same reason.
Republican hard-liners harbour even more contempt for Romney than they did for the man they called "McLame" four years ago.
Both men have a history of political moderation, something now considered heresy by a thick strata of rigid conservative activists. (And unlike McCain, Romney has no military credentials on his shoulders.)
Romney is also widely regarded as terminally dull, and he's running against a president whom even the arch-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer describes as not just more likeable but "immeasurably cooler."
All of which left Romney needing to energize his party, urgently. His choice, though, was very much the un-Palin.
Congressman Paul Ryan, may be, as Romney himself puts it, "severely conservative."
But he is also one of those ever-more-precious rarities in modern politics: a muscular intellectual willing to tell voters ugly truths about the state of their nation.
Read it at the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/08/14/f-rfa-macdonald-ryan.html?cmp=rss
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