If it is Mr. Obama and the Democrats [who win], Republicans’ success in the midterm elections of 2010 will look like a blip. Democrats would then have won four of the last six presidential elections — and five of six in the popular vote. They would have passed the most significant change to the welfare state in decades, Mr. Obama’s health care law, and paid a relatively small price for it (the loss of one branch of Congress for two years). And they will have done this despite deep voter dissatisfaction with the direction of the economy and the country as a whole.
If Republicans win everything, Mr. Obama’s success in 2008 will look like the outlier — one that could come to be seen as unavoidable given the financial crisis that was unfolding at the time. And the cost of George W. Bush’s controversial war in Iraq? The loss of the House for four years. But by 2014, Republicans would have controlled it for 16 of the last 20 years, and the new Congress would seek to roll back Mr. Obama’s health care law and other accomplishments that liberals made in the interim.
If Republicans are running on Mr. Ryan’s ideas — and winning with them — they will be able to advance a more credible claim that they have a mandate from the public, and that our politics really have shifted to the right.
My view is that the choice of Mr. Ryan will reduce Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the election relative to some of the alternatives. But there is a heck of a payoff if it works.
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