Tag Archives: running mate

Ryan Right Choice for Romney

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan to be Gov. Mitt Romney’s running mate was an excellent choice.

Nevertheless, the press corps happily bought into the Obama campaign’s early response that, as the Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote: “There was no one on Romney’s short list of contenders they wanted to run against more than the chairman of the House Budget Committee.”

The great thing about that statement is: It would have worked no matter whom Romney had picked. In this age of everything anyone has ever said or even thought about anything being available instantaneously on-line, there is no such thing as a candidate that can’t be savaged in a 30 second ad by one SuperPAC or another. Continue reading →

Campaigns, Conventions, Summer Vacations

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

August in Your Nation’s Capital slows to a crawl. The Congress is gone – which is good news for the Republic. In normal years the President and Vice President head for some shore somewhere.

Well, George W. didn’t. He headed for Crawford, Texas which meant the national press corps got to hang out in Waco for weeks at a time. Compare and contrast that with going to Martha’s Vineyard for a Presidential vacation and you can see why political reporters tend to be Democrats. Continue reading →

Running Mate Good Cop, Bad Cop

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The best bad cop in American political history was Spiro T. Agnew.

He was the one who said that the media were “nattering nabobs of negativity,” called liberal intellectuals “an effete corps of impudent snobs”, and said of the Democrats, “They have formed their own 4-H club – the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

Agnew played the role to the hilt. He helped his running mate, Richard Nixon, looked moderate (which, of course, he was, on the domestic policy side of the equation). And because his comments were so exquisitely crafted, the press couldn’t help but print them.

The problem for Agnew is that he ended up actually being worse than a bad cop. He became a felon, and he had to resign his office so that he could spend some quality time in jail on corruption charges.

Agnew helped to define a new role for the Vice President. And that role was attack dog.

Continue reading →