 | Wednesday, August 15, 2012 | Congress’ record unpopularity — and what it means for Paul Ryan and Mitt RomneyThat just one in 10 Americans approve of the job Congress is doing in new Gallup polling — the lowest ebb for the institution in nearly four decades — is nothing new. After all, congressional approval hasn’t crested 20 percent in more than a year. What is new, however, is that Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate is a 14-year veteran of Congress and currently chairs the House Budget Committee.
Romney’s decision to pick Ryan to share the national ticket has caused all sorts of ripple effects — Medicare, anyone? — not least in giving new life to Democratic attempts to elevate House Republicans in the presidential race.
On Monday in Iowa, Obama described Ryan as “one of those leaders of Congress standing in the way” of passage of the farm bill.
And the president — currently in the midst of a three-day Iowa campaign swing — has taken to describing Ryan, as he did during a stop on Tuesday in Oskaloosa, as “the ideological leader of the Republicans in Congress.”
None of that is by accident. Obama and his campaign team have been working for months to link Romney to the unpopular policies of congressional Republicans with very limited success, due to the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has never served a day in federal office.
In putting Ryan — a man who has spent the past 20-plus years of his life in and around conservative circles in Washington — on the ticket, Romney has breathed new life into Obama’s “Mitt Romney=congressional Republicans” hit.
Of course, nothing in politics happens in a vacuum. So, even as Obama is trying to tie Ryan/Romney to everything people don’t like about Congress — and, at this point, that’s pretty much everything — the Republican ticket is seeking to cast the Wisconsin Republican as the exception to the Washington political rule.
“In a city that is far too often characterized by pettiness and personal attacks, Paul Ryan is a shining exception,” Romney said Saturday in his speech introducing Ryan for the first time. “There are a lot of people in the other party who might disagree with Paul Ryan; I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t respect his character and judgment.”
It remains to be seen if the “Ryan as reformer to a broken process” narrative can catch on. But simply by choosing someone with over a decade of congressional experience as his VP, Romney has handed Obama a golden opportunity to re-litigate the idea that the GOP presidential nominee should be answerable for the unpopularity of his party in Washington. And that’s not a good thing for the GOP. |
