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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

2012 Ryan's Hedging His Bets

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 4:42 PM

Slog tipper Melanie links to this Washington Post story:

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan plans to begin airing ads in Wisconsin as he asks voters to elect him to an eighth House term that he hopes to never serve.

Contracts formalized Tuesday with at least one Milwaukee television station show that Ryan’s congressional ads will start airing Wednesday morning and go initially for two weeks. The Ryan congressional ads start in the same week as presidential ticket mate Mitt Romney’s commercials went on air in Wisconsin, although the cost for the two sets of ads are drawn from different campaign accounts.

That's prudent of Ryan—he's legally allowed to run for two seats in Wisconsin—but it looks really bad. I wonder if the Romney campaign ever floated the idea that Ryan drop out of his House race for a stronger appearance of a commitment to the Romney campaign? And if so, I wonder how loudly Ryan laughed when they asked him to do that?

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Whatever, wasn't Biden was also running for reelection in the senate in 2008? Did that also look really bad?

Posted by rejemy on September 11, 2012 at 4:52 PM

Yeah, Biden won both. Wonder if Ryan will loose both.

Posted by DJSauvage on September 11, 2012 at 5:10 PM

@#1
Yes, Biden, and for that matter Holy Joe Lieberman, ran for re-election while running for veep. Basically, this is par for the course. I believe that in both cases - as in this one - the rules basically said that if they won the higher office the governor, who was not coincidentally of the same party as they were, could appoint someone to serve until a special election was held.

The counter-example is at the top of the ticket: Bob Dole ('96) resigned his Senate seat to campaign for office, but he was the only recent candidate to do this. Bill Clinton, George W Bush, John Kerry, and Obama all retained their high elected office while running for the Presidency, with the successful candidates then resigning in favor of their Lieutenant Governor (Clinton, Bush) or the appointee of their Governor (who was sadly the corrupt scumbag Rod Blagojevitch)

Posted by Warren Terra on September 11, 2012 at 5:21 PM

@1 The key here is that Ryan is campaigning for his Congress seat. That's the difference.

Posted by Some Old Nobodaddy Logged In on September 11, 2012 at 5:22 PM

@#3 (myself)
just after I hit "submit" I remembered that in fact had Gore/Lieberman won then Lieberman's replacement would have been appointed by the Republican governor. Just one of the innumerable reasons Lieberman was the worst veep pick ever, with the obvious exception of Dick Cheney, who after all picked himself.

Posted by Warren Terra on September 11, 2012 at 5:24 PM

Wow -- that's the most responsible decision I've ever heard Ryan making.

Posted by LogopolisMike

on September 11, 2012 at 5:42 PM

I was in southern Wisconsin this past weekend and there were plenty of "Ryan for Congress" signs on display.

Posted by Tyler Pierce on September 11, 2012 at 6:10 PM

He's lying again... he doesn't want that job.

Posted by Cracker Jack on September 11, 2012 at 6:28 PM

I adore you Paul, but this is some really heavy spin. Running for two seats is the normal and accepted thing, and doesn't become suddenly bad just because Ryan does it. Maybe tone down the ad hominem.

Posted by treefort on September 11, 2012 at 6:29 PM

I think it would be absolutely lovely if Ryan lost both elections and actually had to find a job in the private sector for the first time in his life. Not that I would expect it to improve his truth to untruth ratio to any extent, but still . . .

Posted by Calpete on September 11, 2012 at 9:14 PM

While it is par for the course to run for your old job and the presidency/vice-presidency at the same time... I don't know of a whole lot of representatives in the house whose elections are contested seriously enough for TV ads to be needed. Just sayin'.

Posted by alguna_rubia on September 11, 2012 at 9:34 PM

Gererally, anyone whose term of office was about to expire would have already filed to run for re-election when they got chosen as a VP pick and in many cases there's no provision to 'unfile' for the lower office. Previous VP candidates may have been running simultaneously for re-election to a lower office pro-forma - but I don't recall any of the airing TV ads or actively campaigning for both jobs at once.

Posted by SuperSteve on September 12, 2012 at 12:02 AM

I believe it's Wisconsin law that a name cannot be removed from the ballot unless the person dies.

To be on the ballot and make no effort to run could be construed as such great hubris that his election to national office was assured and could also backfire.

Posted by xizar on September 12, 2012 at 11:17 AM