Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate was a big hit with many GOP activists, but it isn’t playing that well yet with the public at large. The Wisconsin congressman was seen as a “fair” or “poor” choice by 42 percent of Americans surveyed in a USA Today/Gallup poll, while 39 percent thought he was an “excellent” or “pretty good” vice presidential choice. That’s the lowest favorability of any running mate since Dan Quayle in 1988. But the low rating is likely in large part because many Americans are not very familiar with Ryan, which will change. A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that favorable impressions of Ryan increased 15 percentage points after Romney’s announcement Saturday.
Neither Associated Press nor MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow are backing down over a recent AP story on the role abortion was playing in the Sedgwick County district attorney’s race. AP quoted Operation Rescue president Troy Newman claiming that if District Attorney Nola Foulston “had done her job,” Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller “would still be alive today.” Newman contends that Foulston’s failure to prosecute Tiller is what led anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder to murder him. Maddow thinks it was irresponsible for AP to include Newman’s claims and to not mention Roeder’s links to Operation Rescue. “He didn’t get prosecuted so, obviously, he had to be shot, so says Operation Rescue, and so writes down the Associated Press, thus resulting in newspapers all over the country printing this absolutely wack-a-doo, uncontested, more than insinuation,” Maddow complained. She called on AP to retract the article, which AP refused to do. “We were quoting someone who was playing an active role in the outcome of an election,” Paul Colford, the AP’s director of media relations, told MSNBC. “We stand by the story.”
Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate was a big hit with many GOP activists, but it isn’t playing that well yet with the public at large. The Wisconsin congressman was seen as a “fair” or “poor” choice by 42 percent of Americans surveyed in a USA Today/Gallup poll, while 39 percent thought he was an “excellent” or “pretty good” vice presidential choice. That’s the lowest favorability of any running mate since Dan Quayle in 1988. But the low rating is likely in large part because many Americans are not very familiar with Ryan, which will change. A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that favorable impressions of Ryan increased 15 percentage points after Romney’s announcement Saturday.
