Partisan Redistricting Helped Lyin' Ryan Keep His Seat

[amborin]

Paul Ryan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Election Day

"....Then they were off to lose the 2012 election. Decisively.

Romney said some nice things about his running mate in a brief concession speech early Wednesday morning. But Ryan was not invited to make remarks. And it was clear enough by then that Ryan’s contribution to the ticket was, indeed, viewed as a discreet one.

Ryan, whose selection as Romney’s running mate was once considered key to carrying the wring state of Wisconsin for the Republicans, turned out to be a miserable addition to the ticket. Not only didn’t he help win the state, he couldn’t even win his hometown of Janesville, which went overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and surrounding Rock County....

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....It was even worse in Ryan's “safety” race for his seat in the US House of Representatives. The seven-term congressman kept his seat, thanks to partisan redistricting that grabbed off a chunk of Republican Waukesha County and attached it to Ryan’s southeastern Wisconsin’s district. Yet despite the machinations that made his 1st District decidedly more Republican, prevailed by the narrowest margin of his career—over Democratic challenger Rob Zerban.

Ryan ran especially badly close to home, losing Janesville and the portion of Rock County that is in the 1st. It wasn’t even that close: Zerban won almost 52 percent to Ryan’s 46 percent.....

.....Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” budget plan outlined an American austerity agenda that takes pieces out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to pad the pockers of Wall Street speculators, the for-profit insurance industry and wealthy campaign donors.

That didn’t play well in Janesville.

But what played even worse was Ryan’s attempt to play politics with the most traumatic event in the recent history of Janesville: the closing of the General Motors plant that for the better part of a century was the city’s top employer.

Ryan knew the plant closed at the end of the Bush years, yet he tried to suggest in his speech to the Republican National Convention that Barack Obama had something to do with it....."

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/171135/paul-ryan-and-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-election-day



do you guys remember how several months ago Nate Silver did a cost/benefit analysis of various possible V.P. choices that Romney might make?

posters on his blog were upset that Nate's astute analysis was potentially helping Romney.....

I think one Nate mentioned was Martinez of New Mexico.