THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
holds up a copy of
Congressional Budget
Office’s “The Budget and
Economic Outlook: Fiscal
Years 2011 to 2021.”
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
HUFFINGTON 08.26.12
tive,” Myers said. “He also talked
to a lot of people outside that
group informally. A lot of people.”
She repeated it again for emphasis: “He talked to a lot of people.”
Romney had made up his mind
by Aug. 1. He offered Ryan the
job on Aug. 5, in an elaborately
arranged secret meeting, and
announced his pick on Aug. 11.
Even the rollout was executed
without a hiccup.
Yet there was also some evidence that Romney’s choice of
Ryan was shaped by shifting political fortunes. By August, it appeared that playing it safe wasn’t
working. Romney was slipping in
the polls, his personal approval
and popularity sinking under the
weight of the Obama campaign’s
brutal attacks on his character
and personality. Running only
against Obama wasn’t cutting it.
The day before Romney announced Ryan as his running
mate, the Romney campaign gathered reporters in a windowless
second-floor conference room in
its Boston headquarters and insisted that the polls meant little.
“Guys it’s the middle of summer. It’s the doldrums,” said a
senior Romney campaign official,
who spoke on the condition that
he not be identified. “If there
was movement you would see it
in Rasmussen and you would see
it in Gallup. And we’re not seeing it,” the official said, walking
reporters through a PowerPoint
briefing that focused on how the
Obama campaign had outspent