If you were Romney in 2012, Who do you pick as your running mate?

[Agonized-Statism]

I think with Ryan he was trying a two-in-one appeal to blue collar Midwesterners and what he saw as a young generation of libertarians. Blue collar appeal is hopeless when you're Mitt Romney, and those voters were already becoming disillusioned with Obama anyway, so I would have ran as a more libertarian, 2013 RNC autopsy kind of candidate with Rubio for Tea Party appeal and to reinforce the image of a Hispanic-friendly campaign. Better to try a Conservative, Inc. route with plenty of distance from the Bush era neocons. The Trump model of supercharging WWC turnout and hoping minority turnout falls isn't sustainable, and frankly wouldn't have been possible for Romney. If everything went right:


President Barack Obama (D-IL) / Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE)
Fmr. Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) / Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) ✓

Then, when Clinton tries a populist run in 2016, spam attack ads on her scandals and personality. Do something bold like abolish the NSA to look folksy (while replacing it with several smaller agencies to keep the government happy). Also, scale down involvement in the Middle East. There were no political gains to be made from war in 2016. After that, try to handle COVID as competently as possible to soften the inevitable Republican wipeout in 2020.

[Agonized-Statism]

First of all, Ryan was a poor choice to "appeal to blue collar midwesterners".  Even then he wasn't terribly popular in his home turf.

Tell Romney that. According to Double Down, many on Romney's campaign favored Ryan because he was "young, telegenic, Irish Catholic, with blue collar appeal," and could potentially help the campaign in his competitive home state: https://swampland.time.com/2013/11/02/the-hunt-for-pufferfish/

Obviously he didn't do either, which is why I brought up Romney's misconceptions.