Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney named Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on Saturday morning as his choice for vice-presidential candidate. The Times story.It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I think this is the end of the campaign. Sure Ryan is young, personable, and socially skilled--more so than Romney. And sure, he's the intellectual hero of the tea party congressional delegation. And sure, like the rest of us he is a Cafeteria Catholic. And yes, he is a white male. But, this does not look like a winning combination.UPDATE: Nate Silver does the numbers and sees this as a risky (but perhaps necessary) move; the Romney campaign saw itself losing and jumped for Ryan.Dean Bakers assessment from Politico (scroll down): Paul Ryan will clearly make an intelligent and articulate candidate. On the other hand he has explicitly laid out positions that the vast majority of the public views as extreme.He has advocated ending Medicare as it currently exists and replacing it with a voucher system. He has proposed a tax plan that would give large tax cuts to the richest people in the country which would be offset by eliminating items like the mortgage interest deduction and the deduction for employer provided health insurance. The net effect would be a tax increase of several thousand dollars a year for millions of middle income families.Ryan has also proposed privatizing Social Security. After economic mismanagement destroyed much of the wealth that people had in their homes and their retirement accounts, this position is likely to be even less popular than ever.And Representative Ryan's budget would eliminate most of the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of his budget showed all non-health care, non-Security Security spending shrinking to 4.5 percent of GDP by 2040 and to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. The military budget is currently over 4.0 percent of GDP and has never been less than 3.0 percent of GDP since the start of the Cold War.This means that if we take Representative Ryan's views seriously, he wants to get rid of the State Department, the Justice Department, the national park system, the federal court system, the air traffic control system and most of the other activities that we associate with the federal government. This must be the case, since CBO undertook the analysis at Ryan's request and surely he would have corrected them if they misrepresented his position.It is questionable whether many voters will support a candidate such extreme positions. Romney is now associating himself with these positions by his decision to select Representative Ryan.