Two separate Washington DC insider sources are claiming that Mitt Romney will announce delusional budget hawk and conservative darling Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate on Saturday, according to two sources. Romney and the GOP are hoping that the pick of Ryan will energize the Republican and the Tea Party base.
If Romney were to win with Ryan on the ticket, he would have a mandate to make sweeping changes not only to the size of government, but to programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are products of former President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program.
Ryan who has a rating of ZERO on LGBT issues according to the Human Rights Campaign political scorecard, in both 2004 and 2006 voted for a federal marriage amendment that would have defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman everywhere in the United States. In the 2009-2010 and the 2007-2008 sessions, he voted against hate crimes protections and in the 2001-2002 session of Congress, Ryan voted to exempt faith-based initiatives from state and local government civil rights laws. Also in 1999, he supported a ban on gay adoption in DC. and opposed implementation of DC’s domestic partnership registry.
Additional Ryan trivia: According to an AP report Ryan “was voted prom king and the ‘Biggest Brown-Noser’ of his 1988 high school class before leaving for college in Ohio.”