PAUL RYAN IN CINCINNATI

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CINCINNATI, Ohio
At Byers Steel for a Paul Ryan rally and the WiFi is much better than yesterday. The original press release said that Mitt Romney would also be here, but there’s been a schedule change and R-Money won’t join us until this afternoon (2:30 p.m.) at Vandalia.

UPDATE: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul introduced Ryan, who began by cracking jokes about the Green Bay Packers’ defeat in Monday night’s NFL game, comparing Obama to the replacement refs.

UPDATE II: During Q&A, Ryan was asked about Democrats’ attacks on the GOP’s Medicare reform proposals. “Can you give us a three- or four-sentence response?” the man asked. Ryan replied, “How about a three-word response? It’s not true.”

UPDATE III: Dude! Ryan just came within a few words of saying “Higher Education Bubble.” He said that government keeps “pumping money into” colleges and universities, and spoke of the need to get to “the root cause of tuition inflation.”

UPDATE IV: The last question for Ryan was about the threat of a nuclear Iran. He exited the stage to the rocking sounds of AC/DC’s “Runaway Train.” Next stop, Vandalia.

A sign reminds those arriving at the event that early voting is already underway. This is a working steel factory. The townhall event was held in a warehouse area full of steel I-beams and rebar.

A MoveOn.org banner among the handful of protesters — no more than two dozen — outside the event, which drew several hundred people on a rainy Tuesday morning. I say “several hundred” because the official number, 1,500 seemed a good bit high to me. The Associated Press lady sitting beside me in the media filing area says she thought maybe a thousand people were here.

Just bumped into Mike Biundo, who managed Rick Santorum’s primary campaign and is now working for the Romney campaign. Mike says he’s now assigned to Ohio “for the duration,” and that the campaign’s internal polls show a much closer race than the absurd Washington Post poll showing Obama ahead by 8 points (which, naturally, Politico is hyping).

17 comments

  2. But then the important factor is to win the Electoral College, not the popular vote. So how will the Repubs do this? There are several battleground states, not just Ohio….

  3. Citing a campaign’s internal polls is not comforting. It’s what the Dems did in WI. Granted the polls tend to err to the left–always–but I’m still not comfortable with this line of defense.

  4. So that’s who was killing traffic on I-75 as I was trying to get to Wasserstrom’s to pick up a new pizza peel and stone. I was wondering.

  6. Inaccurate reporting. I counted close to 40 protesters.
    The reporter was obviously at the event, and didn’t see what was going on outside.
    We had many, many “thumbs up” from passers by..

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