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From: Dale Baker	8/11/2012 5:33:18 PM
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Ross Douthat's "Yes, but..." conclusion after spinning a few points in favor of the Ryan choice: "None of these three points, however, change my basic skepticism about the pick. This is a game-changer, of a sort: Romney has been running a cautious, content-free campaign, and picking Ryan will effectively force him to become much more substantive on policy, while giving the country the clearest possible choice heading into November. But setting up a clash of worldviews doesn’t address Romney’s most glaring policy weakness, which is the (understandable) fear among hard-strapped voters that Republican policies will benefit the rich more than the middle class. Ryan’s association with entitlement reform is at best orthogonal to that weakness, and at worst it exacerbates it substantially. What’s more, by picking him Romney may have passed up a golden opportunity to take advantage of the Obama campaign’s leftward tack over the last year: Instead of making a sustained play for the center of the country, he’s chosen to raise the ideological stakes.This will make the race more exciting and more serious, and I’m looking forward to watching it play out. But I don’t think it’s made a Romney victory more likely."