Vice Presidential Nominee, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden and Republican rival Paul Ryan sought votes in political battleground states on Saturday while their running mates took a day off the campaign trail ahead of a potentially make-or-break debate next week.

Trailing in the must-win state of Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney asked his running mate Paul Ryan to meet him here this week. After 24 days apart, Romney and Ryan reunited on an airport tarmac on Tuesday amid grumbling from some Republicans that the campaign has grown complacent, leaving Ryan, its strongest advocate, off the national stage.

Conservatives had hoped that Mitt Romney’s choice of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) as his running mate would make Romney act more like Ryan — bold, specific, confident.

With a little more than a month to go before the vice presidential debate, Congressman Paul Ryan will endure his first full day of debate preparations Sunday.

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan declined on Tuesday to back away from statements in his party convention speech that nonpartisan fact checkers have branded as false or misleading.

The Obama campaign is trying to put a new tag on Republican Medicare plans. "Voucher care." "We are for Medicare, they are for voucher care," said Vice President Biden on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. "It's basic."

When Mitt Romney was searching for a ticket mate, Republicans pleaded: Don't pick another Sarah Palin. So it may come as a surprise that, in at least one important way, he ended up doing precisely that with Paul D. Ryan. Like Palin four years ago, the Wisconsin congressman has captured the heart of the Republican convention. The thunderous response to his speech Wednesday night was the latest indication.

Paul Ryan's vice presidential acceptance speech ran into a lot of trouble with fact-checkers and journalists. It seemed like some reporters' heads were going to explode on Twitter as Ryan spoke. For instance, he blasted President Obama for not doing more to keep a GM plant in his hometown open. The problem was that the plant closed before Obama took office. He also criticized Obama for rejecting recommendations from a debt commission that he himself sat on, and whose findings he also rejected.

Paul D. Ryan’s uncanny ability to develop relationships with like-minded conservatives while he worked on Capitol Hill helped lay the groundwork for his ascension to vice-presidential candidate.

Paul Ryan has dutifully set aside some key positions to support Mitt Romney's. It's something most vice presidential candidates have to do, but still opens him up to attacks as a flip-flopper.