Romney and Ryan

There's been a lot written about Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his VP candidate and what the choice says about Romney himself.  On both sides, pundits and editorial writers seem to assume that the selection of Ryan tells us something significant about what Romey's positions will be if elected.  I think that's wrong. 

The only thing consistent about Romney is his inconsistency, and I think the only calculation he made in selecting Ryan was the same one Kennedy made in selecting Johnson:  it'll help me get elected.  He may actually be wrong on that, of course.  It's possible, I suppose, that Ryan's positions could end up alienating more independents than it wins in Tea Party-ers.  But I don't have much of a doubt that the election was all Romney was thinking about.  After all, he's nominating Ryan for an office famously characterized (apparently by John Nance Garner) as "not worth a bucket of warm spit." 

As the Economist recounts:: 

WHEN Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favoured keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35% to 28% for the richest Americans.

Given this history, does anyone doubt that Romney is fully capable of putting Ryan in a closet and leaving him there for four years?

Nothing Romney says or does before the election provides a basis for any inference about what he will do or say afterwards.  Given what he has said, though, perhaps that is a source of some comfort.