The Hashtag That Changed History

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“This is an emergency post. . . . Mitt Romney must choose Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee, period.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 4, 2012

Who would have thunk it, huh? Friday night I went to bed early, and Ali Akbar kept calling to tell me the news, but my wife couldn’t get me to wake up. The headlines in the order they appeared at Memeorandum:

From Boston to Janesville
— Robert Costa, National Review

Romney Prepares to Pick Ryan
— Weekly Standard

ROMNEY TO ANNOUNCE RUNNING MATE
SATURDAY IN VA.
— Associated Press

Romney To Unveil Vice Presidential Pick On Saturday
— Think Progress

The Angel and Devil in Paul Ryan
— ABC News

Mitt Romney Set To Pick
Paul Ryan As Running Mate
— Jon Ward, Huffington Post

BREAKING: Romney to announce
vice presidential pick Saturday
— CNN

Mitt Romney picks Paul Ryan as running mate
— Politico

Romney to announce running mate on Saturday morning
— The Hill

NBC: 3 sources indicate
Romney will pick Ryan
— NBC News

Everybody I talked to last Friday night at the Americans for Prosperity Summit — Aug. 3, at the terrace bar of the Washington Hilton — said it was going to be Tim Pawlenty.

That inspired a sort of panic: “Good Lord, not T-Paw!” When I heard that Marco Rubio had been eliminated due to “vetting” issues, I started an all-out push for Paul Ryan. One of the first people I spoke to was Suhail Khan of Americans for Tax Reform who told me, “Ryan vets. The worst thing they could come up with was that he worked as a bartender at Tortilla Coast when he first came to D.C.”

That clinched it. Driving home from the AFP Summit Saturday afternoon, I called Ali Akbar, who quickly minted the #GiveUsRyan hashtag, and I pulled off the highway to stop at a Burger King and write that “emergency” post, which was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Daley Gator, Roderic Deane and Troglopundit, among others.

That was Saturday afternoon. In addition to pushing Ryan on Twitter, Ali was busy behind the scenes. After a long conversation with him on Tuesday, I reported the final three:

VP Tea Leaves: Is Mitt’s Short List Now
Down to Pawlenty, Portman or Ryan?

That post was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Bob Belvedere, Andrew J. Patrick and others. By then, the conservative drumbeat for Ryan was getting loud enough that headlines were popping up left and right. When Alex Moe of NBC News reported that Ryan was planning a “vacation”? Yeah, that was a tea leaf. And by Thursday, the choice was clear:

Hey, @MittRomney: This #GiveUsRyan
Hashtag Is Becoming Kinda Popular

When I finally woke up and called Ali about 3 a.m. today, he was driving to Norfolk to attend the rally where Mitt Romney will announce this morning that Paul Ryan will be the next vice president of the United States. Did the #GiveUsRyan hashtag have as much influence as, say, Bill Kristol pleading on Ryan’s behalf? No, but it definitely had an impact: Ali has friends on the Romney staff and, when the word started leaking out Friday, the Romney staffers told him, “Good work, Ali.”

Your Tweets — and you know who you are — definitely made a difference. As I explained Thursday, Romney’s people pay attention to their online metrics. Every Tweet to @MittRomney with #GiveUsRyan was a signal that Ryan was the grassroots consensus.

So far, only Nice Deb has acknowledged the difference you made.

You may never get full credit, but as Ronald Reagan said, “You can accomplish much, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

When your kids and grandkids ask someday, “How did Paul Ryan become vice president?” you can say, “I picked him!”

 

UPDATE: The Rio Norte Line reminds us of how Ryan defended his budget against Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

UPDATE: Instalanche! BTW, there are some retroactive hindsight claims by GOP “insiders” that Mitt picked Ryan before Aug. 4, but don’t believe it. That’s just the Establishment trying to deny credit to the conservative grassoots.

UPDATE II: Linked by William J. Hoge, Daley Gator, Jackie Wellfonder, The Lonely Conservative and Da Tech Guy.

 


59 comments

  3. Holy crap, you actually got what you wanted. How does that feel? It’s something I’ve never experienced when it comes to politics.

  5. Ryan voted for NCLB, TARP, the auto bailout and Medicare Part D.  And, he pushed that poor little old lady in a wheelchair over the cliff!

  10. “Great, kid! Don’t get cocky.”

    To the extent that the hashtag affected the VP choice, I salute the effort. Ryan is a wise choice.

    It’s one thing to add to the noise to the conservative echo chamber in the right side of the blogosphere. It’s something else to move the result in a national election.

    Get busy.

  12. I’m reserving my’ Snoopy dance’ for when these guys get sworn in and not a moment sooner. I’m a ‘pray for sun, prepare for rain’ kind of gal.

  13.  Some bloggers got what they wanted with the GOP VP pick four years ago. Or so they thought.

    Please, Lord, don’t let this blow up in Ryan’s face like 2008 did to Palin.

  19. Ryan makes the worst GOP candidate in modern times slightly more bearable.

    And compared to the squishy alternatives, Ryan is the best squish. 

    Ryan is the white Rubio. 

    Many people consider him a Tea Party guy despite his many votes to the contrary.  However, unlike Rubio, Ryan isn’t going to destroy GOP enthusiasm by touting amnesty at every campaign stop.

    (it is telling how out of touch Romney is when this is his “BOLD” pick and also his comments about Repeal & Replace of RomneyCare-National Edition)

  21. First thought is that Romney picked a mirror image of himself to send a message about his conservative creds. Actions speak louder. This should greatly allay fears that Romney is in the Rockefellar camp of the Republican party. Second thought: OMG we could be in for 16 years of conservative executive branch governance. Third thought: don’t screw it up, boys. Fourth thought: where’s my checkbook?
    This has to be an uneasy moment for Boehner and McConnell. I’m sure they’re happy but Ryan will embolden efforts to replace congressional leadership to better align with a Romney/Ryan administration; bring the impending train wreck to a quicker, smoother halt.
    Will Ron Paul react favorably, and his followers? I suppose so.
    A Ryan-Biden debate might be too embarrassing to watch.
    Expect the dems to trash the term, jump the shark. Something better will have to be invented. I still like the older phrase, gone of their rails.
    The Democratic convention will have shades of a funeral for the yet living, Obama. Try as they might otherwise, we’re sure to see signs of it.
    Obama will fulfill a biblical prophesy in person by wailing and knashing his teeth. I won’t be pretty. Michelle will slap him and we’ll know about it.

  24. With Ryan out of the House, Speaker Boehner no longer needs to worry about spending, cuts, taxation and so on.
    Senator McConnell may see a VP Ryan on occasion doing his official Senate duties, but a Veep who isn’t a member of the club is easily dispatched.

    So who replaces Ryan? An Establishment GOP? And in the House? Jerry Lewis returns to provide the intellectual and moral underpinnings of GOP Budget-Think? 

    Status quo won. Spending will continue at the current rate. Welcome to America, where cliff diving is our new national sport.  

  28. Palin got thrown into the deep end and had her own side trying to hold her head under the water.  Ryan knows the pool well and he and Mitt are not working against one another.  This will absolutely not blow up in Ryan’s face.  Ryan knows he is right and can argue his points.  Not that Mitt’s win is guaranteed (Mitt has his own issues) but Ryan is only a plus for him.  

  33. Romney isn’t my first pick for President, but he damn sure ain’t McCain (his children are much classier than McCain’s spawn). 

    And it seems likely that Romney didn’t hire a campaign of backstabbing alpha hotels.

    So I’m sure that he won’t backstab Ryan. Other GOP idiots, I’m not so sure.

  36. It seems Mitt gave us Ryan . . ….

    . . . after all, and the conservative blogosphere is suddenly alight with much-needed enthusiasm. And Stacy McCain is among the enthusiastic, which seemed as unlikely as my own inclusion within their ranks did just a few weeks ago, if not more so. Mean…

  38. Free market American industry can put one in every Americans garage if they want one. Much better than the Volt Obama wanted to force Americans to have (if allowed by his commiecrats).
    The standard used to be “Cadillac” was the best to be hoped for and most desired. I kicked it up to the RR standard, none higher. Compare that to the flaming mess that cost more than a years wages and burns down your house that Obama demanded you buy.

  41. I honestly didn’t think it would be Ryan because it would have been exactly the opposite pick from what Romney said he was looking for in a VP.  I was expecting someone with at least some executive experience somewhere, either private or public sector. 

    Ryan is a man of good character, isn’t afraid to speak his mind, has a degree in economics, and appears to be a natural charismatic leader.   You could tell that Romney and Ryan had a natural affection for each other during the Wisconsin primary days.  They clearly like each other and that means a lot when you have a lot of work to do.

    Congratulations to Mr. Ryan.  Now lets get this show on the road.

  43. Congratulations!  You did it!

    Just got off the phone with Mitt and he confessed he was just about to pick Lincoln Chaffee, but your hashtag made the difference.

  47. >blockquote>[I]t definitely had an impact: Ali has friends on the Romney staff and, when the word started leaking out Friday, the Romney staffers told him, “Good work, Ali.”
    “Friends on the Romney staff.” Well, that narrows it down to a group that includes the people who distribute the yard signs. 

    Here’s the problem with Stacy’s logic: in order for such a vague comment to even possibly suggest that Romney made his VP decision bashed on a Twitter hashtag count, Ali’s multiple “friends” would have to represent a significant bloc of the tiny group of people who were privy to Romney’s thoughts on the matter. 

    The assertion here is that Romney’s closest advisers deliberately set in motion this public claim that Ali — a campaign outsider with a criminal conviction — is Romney’s brain.  Sorry, but that’s about as convincing as Harry Reid’s tale of multiple Bain investors calling him after reading a decade’s worth of Romney’s tax returns.

    If Romney really was sifting through social-media blips and bleats to decide who should be a heartbeat away from the presidency, he wouldn’t have the gravitas the presidency requires. So in the end, this post is all about Stacy portraying Romney as a fool in order to puff up his own self-importance.

  48. there are some retroactive hindsight claims by GOP “insiders” that Mitt picked Ryan before Aug. 4, but don’t believe it. That’s just the Establishment trying to deny credit to the conservative grassoots.

    The more the details come out, the harder it’s going to be to continue this self-deception. The Associated Press is reporting that Romney finished his deliberations and extended the invitation to Ryan three days before Ali started his hashtag thingie.

  49. Here’s Stacy on August 4, explaining why there was an EMERGENCY!!! that called for the ultimate weapon: the Twitter  hashtag:

    Friday night, I was talking to some top activists at the AFP summit and one of them assured me that the word among Minnesota Republicans is that T-Paw is at the top of Romney’s VP list, all but guaranteed to be the running mate. 

    Translation: some guy in a bar told me he heard that some other guys had heard that….

    For the calendar-challenged, that Friday was two days after Romney had already made the call to Ryan.

    The lesson here? Don’t report any random (and likely drunken) gossip you hear as fact. Instead, call someone who actually knows what’s going on and ask them what’s going on.

  50. The best lessons to be taken from this whole debacle are:

    1) As Stacy admitted early on, this kind of “media veepstakes speculation” is utter bullshit; and

    2) It is incredibly hard, even for people who know it’s bullshit, to resist the temptation to participate in the bullshit.

    NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen coined a great term for the malady that leads to such debacles. He says political reporters now worship in what he calls “the Church of Savviness.”

    Here’s Rosen’s explanation of this new journalistic creed:

    Savviness! Deep down, that’s what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in— their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it’s better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts.

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