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Picking Paul Ryan as his running mate will continue to be a double-edged sword -- he'll rev up the extreme right and the true believers, but I don't think he's going to be much help at all with independent voters. Via Think Progress:

Mitt Romney, campaigning in Virginia today, hammered President Obama for supporting cuts in defense spending.

NBC’s David Gregory, in an interview with Romney scheduled to be aired in full tomorrow, noted that the cuts were part of the compromise to end the debt ceilling crisis and were supported by the entire GOP leadership. An excerpt:

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I want to maintain defense spending at the current level of the GDP. I don’t want to keep bringing it down as the president’s doing. This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation in the wrong direction. DAVID GREGORY: Republican leaders agreed to that deal to the extend the debt ceiling. MITT ROMNEY: And that’s a big mistake. I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it.

Among the GOP leaders who made “a big mistake” and voted for the cuts was his running mate, Paul Ryan. That hasn’t stopped Paul Ryan, however, from also crticizing the sequestor on the campaign trail.