My friend Tom is a fellow blogger in my blog Immizen.com.
When he posted an article on Thursday with the title "Breaking News: Romney To Choose Paul Ryan As VP Running Mate”, at first I thought he was announcing the official news of the day. But after a quick look at the news I realized he was jumping the gun. I thought it was risky (making big announcements even in a tiny blog) but since I appreciate his participation in the blog I said nothing. Plus, his family has ties to the Democratic Party, Janet Reno herself came to his wedding. Although that would surely not help him get insider information on Romney's campaign.
In hindsight he did much better than the Huffington Post editor Al Eisele who wrote just a day before the official announcement: “Romney's VP Choice? It's Rob Portman”.
So why did Tom pick Paul Ryan?
Before I tell you about it, let me share what I think is the reason why Romney picked Paul Ryan and use the words of Ezra Klein as he said it so well (this tidbit was also a finding of Tom):
But if Romney chooses Ryan — if he makes this the “big election over big issues” that the Wall Street Journal editorial page wants — then his loss will be their loss as well. He’ll still be blamed, of course. But the fact will remain that he took conservative counsel, adopted conservative ideas, named a conservative hero as his vice president, ran on the Ryan budget, and lost to a liberal. The right will not be able to pretend they weren’t on the ticket. They will have chosen the ticket. The right will not be able to say Romney ran a cautious campaign. They will have cranked his campaign’s strategy up to 11.
So back to why Tom picked Paul Ryan…
It's all there in his original post, but he also explained it to me in an email:
Romney is a pathological ("habitual") liar and his saying
"I don't think I have anything for you ... except I ... I certainly expect to have…"
was unambiguous Romney-speak for "I really have something to say now".
Tom said he focused on the word “vision” that Romney used to describe his future VP pick, that it had to be someone with a “a vision for the country that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country”. So Tom told me in his email:
No offense to HuffPo (well maybe a little offense), but Rob Portman has never stated a "vision for America" of any sort, good, bad or ugly.
Paul Ryan's vision is the rare hybrid of both bad and ugly and he is the only Republican that has gone beyond sweeping generalities.
It really seems Tom is good at parsing Romney's words:
Romney told Chuck Todd in very clear language that he was choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate. It really wasn't even deduction so much as developing an ear for the way Romney talks.
So now you know,
if you want to decode Romney’s messages just ask Tom.