Paul Ryan - 2012 Vice Presidential Campaign

2012 Vice Presidential Campaign

Dan Balz of The Washington Post wrote that Ryan was promoted as a candidate for Vice President "by major elements of the conservative opinion makers, including The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard and the editor of National Review."

On August 11, 2012 the Romney campaign officially announced Ryan as its choice for Vice President through its "Mitt's VP" mobile app as well as by the social networking service Twitter, about 90 minutes before Romney's in-person introduction. Before the official announcement in Norfolk, it was reported that Romney had decided to choose Ryan on August 1, 2012, the day after returning from his foreign trip through the United Kingdom, Poland and Israel. On August 11, 2012, Ryan formally accepted Romney's invitation to join his campaign as his running mate, in front of the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia. Ryan is the major parties' first-ever vice-presidential candidate from Wisconsin.

According to a statistical-historical analysis conducted by Nate Silver, "Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900" and "is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal, meaning that he is the furthest from the center" of any vice presidential candidate chosen from Congress since the turn of the 20th century. This analysis, using the DW-NOMINATE statistical system, has been described as "one of the more statistically rigorous approaches to Ryan's congressional voting record." Political scientist Eric Schickler commented that while Ryan "may well be the most conservative vice presidential nominee in decades," the NOMINATE methodology "is not suited to making claims about the relative liberalism or conservatism of politicians" over a long time span. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 39% thought Ryan was an "excellent" or "pretty good" vice presidential choice, compared to 42% who felt he was a "fair" or "poor" choice.

Ryan formally accepted his nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention on August 29, 2012. In his acceptance speech, he promoted Mitt Romney as the presidential candidate, supported repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), said that he and Romney have a plan to generate 12 million new jobs over the next four years, and promoted founding principles as a solution: "We will not duck the tough issues – we will lead. We will not spend four years blaming others – we will take responsibility. We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles." The speech was well received by the convention audience and praised for being well-delivered. However, media fact-checkers at the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Factcheck.org accused Ryan of "a litany of falsehoods"; Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, the Investor's Business Daily, and Fox News disputed some of the claims by the fact-checkers. Politifact.com rated 33 of Ryan's statements which it suspected of being false or misleading: True:10.5%, Mostly True:18%, Half True:21%, Mostly False:36%, False:9% Pants on Fire:6%

On October 11, 2012, Ryan debated his Democratic counterpart, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, in the only Vice Presidential debate of the 2012 election cycle.

Romney and Ryan lost the 2012 Presidential election, but Ryan retained his seat in the House of Representatives.