Through the halls of Congress and well beyond, a whisper campaign is bursting into the open: Rather than burden him with the usual constraints on a ticket’s No. 2 not to upstage or get ahead of the presidential nominee, let Ryan be Ryan and take a detailed, policy-heavy fight to President Obama and the Democrats.
“They definitely need to use him more,” said Rick Brumby, 52, a Republican voter who attended a rally for Mr. Ryan at the University of Central Florida in Orlando on Saturday, suggesting that Mr. Ryan is better than Mr. Romney at avoiding gaffes and making the case to middle-class voters for Republican policies.
...
A Congressional official with ties to the Ryan camp said the congressman, who is also running for re-election, has a Plan B: Return to Congress, use his positions on both the Budget and the Ways and Means Committees to seize a prominent role in a sweeping overhaul of the tax code, and use that as a springboard back into presidential politics on his own record.
If the Republican ticket loses in November, the rush by Mr. Ryan and other 2016 hopefuls to position themselves for the Iowa caucuses “is going to look like Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”
