Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Akin, Ryan still in their respective races

Posted on by
Reply

On eve of GOP convention, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan still running for Congress

The long-awaited Republican National Convention has opened in Tampa in attenuated fashion, and not much is new. Missouri senate nominee Todd Akin is still in the race, dousing recently aroused hope that he would take himself out with some increasingly defiant pronouncements over the weekend.

Akin

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin has not yet retracted or back-pedaled on her equally firm announcement yesterday that Republicans will fund a write-in candidate against Akin–and, of course, against Sen. Claire McCaskill. As previously written, this kind of thing can change like the vectors of a tropical storm Isaac. For now, however, Rep. Akin’s senate race remains consigned to the GOP establishment dustbin, and according to Matalin, Ann Wagner is “going to be our candidate.”

 

Matalin

Also in recently unchanged news, Rick Warren’s presidential forum remains cancelled.

 

Ditto in ditto, the question whether Rep. Paul Ryan will run for re-election to the House remains unanswered. Communication with Ryan’s Capitol Hill office elicits the information that his press secretary is unavailable. Call-backs, not yet.

 

Ryan

Ryan, unlike Akin, faces at present no prospect of a fellow Republican entering his contest back home. Ryan was unopposed in his own primary.

 

Looking at broader information, staying in his House race might seem a smart move for Ryan. Trying to assess exactly how much damage Rep. Akin’s individual comments–i.e. Akin’s open and explicit statements, clearly aligned with the Republican party platform–have done may be beside the point. Predictions are obviously impossible at this point, but every poll-of-polls that takes the Electoral College into account puts President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney for 2012. Neither party likes this fact pointed out; Democrats are loath to give up fear tactics to generate fund-raising, and Republicans are equally loath to give up gloating about ‘winning’ for the same purpose.

Will Paul Ryan run for the House?

Posted on by
Reply

Paul Ryan Saturday, primaries Tuesday

The biggest news out of Tuesday’s primaries was Wisconsin: former Gov. Tommy Thompson?  Yup. Thompson won with a plurality, 34 percent. If the opposition was a big anti-Thompson vote, it was split–with Grover Norquist’s help, interestingly. Self-funder Eric Hovde was thus unable to put together quite enough votes to beat Thompson.

Former Governor Thompson

If Wisconsin had a run-off rule like that in Texas–where a nominee has to get over 50 percent–presumably Thompson would be headed for a loss like that of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Thompson’s unofficial vote total yesterday was 197,772. His opponents totaled 384,347, approaching double the vote for Thompson. Again, it is interesting that the big-money wing of the so-called Tea Party insurgency–mainly Norquist’s Club for Growth–would weigh in so decisively in Wisconsin. Surely Norquist’s faction can read opinion polls. Can the big-business anti-taxers and anti-regulationers really have thought that Neumann, who came in third, could be put over Thompson? Or did they achieve their actual goal, of damaging Thompson’s main challenger, who fell to second place, thus sending on a more plausible GOP nominee?

Hovde

Will Paul Ryan resign from the U.S. House?

Also in Wisconsin: incumbent Rep. Paul Ryan won his uncontested primary, to face Democratic nominee Rob Zerban. Speaking of polls–if Ryan and his team are reading current election trends, he may not resign from the House to run for Vice President. It will be mildly interesting to see which way they choose to go.

For major self-financing candidates, it was one up and one down yesterday. Hovde lost in Wisconsin, but Linda McMahon won in Connecticut, running again for Senate, this time against Chris Murphy.

Murphy, McMahon