Senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod today compared the 2012 Republican ticket to the 2008 GOP ticket, maintaining that seven-term congressman Paul Ryan wasn’t different from Sarah Palin and predicting that the Romney campaign would end as it did for John McCain.
“There’s no doubt that I think the appointment has thrilled the base of the Republican Party, the Tea Party Republicans, the social conservatives, because Congressman Ryan is a certifiable right-wing ideologue, and so that’s excited them,” Axelrod said on CBS.
“But I saw that excitement four years ago when John McCain appointed Sarah Palin as well. There were huge crowds, much of the same kind of reaction. And I don’t think it worked out very well,” he continued. “I think when the reality catches up with the moment, it’s not going to be a plus for Governor Romney.”
Axelrod called Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, “a very genial guy,” adding “I know him, I like him, I just don’t like his views. I think they’re very dangerous views.”
He called the distinction between Romney’s fiscal plan and Ryan’s “like a choice between a punch in the nose and a knee to the groin.”
Axelrod called Ryan “a leader of the Tea Party, the sort of intellectual leader of the Tea Party group” — even though Ryan is not a member of the 61-lawmaker Tea Party Caucus led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).
“He’s very, very much out of the right wing of the Republican Party,” Axelrod added. “He’s a genial fellow, but his views are quite harsh.”
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