Paul Ryan

Well, I'm pretty sure Mitt Romney's VP pick cost him the nun vote. Fourteen women religious embarked on a nine-state bus tour this summer to protest Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal - which he successfully pushed through the House before it was beaten back in the Senate - because of the drastic, some say catastrophic, cuts it would make to programs that benefit the poor, the sick and the hungry. Pretty much a nun's constituency. The nuns stopped the bus in Mr. Ryan's home town of Janesville, Wis., but he wasn't available to meet with them, although he has jousted with Jesuit priests at Georgetown University, who also criticized him, and the Catholic bishops, who did, too. Dissing nuns doesn't do much for the Republicans' problem with women.

The editorial in Sunday's Sunpaper entitled "The wrong vision" (Aug. 12) seems to be a print version of the PAC-inspired attack ads that evidently have impressed your editors enough to take the syncopated view that any idea that isn't from the current administration is not worthy of consideration. May I suggest that The Sun deputize your crack financial reporters to do the analysis of the key fiscal issues facing the country, and please, don't rely merely on the hand picked and biased D.C. operatives that are flooding the media with their one sided views.

All those political pundits who thought Mitt Romney would choose "safe" when selecting a running mate were quite mistaken. Bold is more like it, and not just because Paul Ryan is young (42) and has never won a race larger than a congressional district. No, this call was a capital-letters-BOLD because Mr. Romney knew he was violating the first rule of running mate selection: be safe and take no risks. A corollary to Rule One is "Have your running mate off the front page within three days of selection.

Paul Ryan being selected as Mitt Romney's GOP running mate was big news late Friday night, and no one on television did a better job of covering it on the fly than MSNBC. I can't believe I typed those words either. MSNBC had become such a joke in its commitment to prison documentaries and lack of coverage on breaking news, that I rarely bothered to even make it part of the mix any more when news broke. But Friday night, MNBC did something that could allow for the channel to regain some serious news credibility: It ditched the docs, kept the ideologue clowns off the air and handed coverage over to the grown-ups at NBC News.

Mitt Romney said he wanted to select a vice presidential candidate who had a vision for America, and that he did. In fact, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan likely beats out his prospective boss in the vision department, having provided the most concrete and detailed expression of how ultra-fiscal conservatism would actually transform our government. Unfortunately, the vision is the wrong one. Mr. Ryan's proposals for the federal budget would end Medicare as we know it and decimate safety net programs for the poor, all while offering huge tax breaks for the wealthy and failing to meaningfully address the budget deficit.

Smirking Joe Biden and ever-so-earnest Paul Ryan played to a TV draw Thursday night in a vice-presidential debate moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz. That might sound boring, but the 90-minute telecast was anything but. Because of the staging, which sat the two men side by side at a table facing Raddatz, there was a much greater sense of engagement between the two and the moderator than there was in last week's presidential debate. That one included a passive-almost-submissive Jim Lehrer as moderator and a President Obama who seemed to be mentally and emotionally somewhere else most of the night.

Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson will speak at a prominent conservative political rally next month, alongside the likes of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, the American Conservative Union said Wednesday. Carson "represents the optimism and hope of the future of the conservative moment," union Chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement announcing Carson's invitation. Carson will be among more than two dozen speakers at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, to be held March 14-16 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Prince George's County.

Paul Ryan is the right pick for a vice presidential candidate who will energize the conservative base ("With Paul Ryan, Romney bets on the wrong vision for America," Aug. 12). He is a very strong conservative leader who is widely respected for his intellect, ability to tackle serious issues and leadership skills, which he demonstrated during his last seven terms in Congress. Mr. Ryan is also well respected and liked by independents and tea party members. He crafted the GOP's for plan for cutting and slashing the Obama administration's out of control spending.

Regarding your editorial on the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, the question of vision you raise can be restated in terms of whether government has become too large and pervasive in the lives of average citizens ("With Paul Ryan, Romney bets on the wrong vision for American," Aug. 11). Certainly the escalating deficit has been in part the result of big government spending on social programs which, while beneficial to many, we simply cannot afford anymore.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley offered pointed criticism of Republicans in an address to the Democratic convention on Tuesday, arguing that President Barack Obama is best suited to right the U.S. economy while GOP nominee Mitt Romney's policies would only move the nation backward. The Democrat said Obama's policies have helped the middle class despite recession and stubbornly high unemployment - to a crowd that chanted with him, "forward, not back. " Though he never mentioned President George W. Bush by name, the address was clearly an attempt to tie Romney and vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to the former GOP administration that ended a second term with low approval ratings.