There are strong signs it is the 42-year-old House Budget Chair Paul Ryan. Romney picks Paul Ryan as running mate

Mitt Romney has selected House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis) as his running mate, and unveiled the ticket at an event in Norfolk, Va. Saturday morning.

The move is a bold choice for Romney and one that a number of conservatives had urged him to make in recent weeks, with some of the loudest calls coming from the pages of the Weekly Standard and The Wall Street ournal. At about 3 a.m., a new website, Romneyryan.com, was launched , paid for by the Romney campaign.


( Also on POLITICO: What the Ryan pick means for Obama)

Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state, has been ground zero for one of the major fights over public-sector unions — and it’s a state where, after Scott Walker defied a gubernatorial recall effort, Republicans are hoping to succeed in the fall. He is the first House member to be selected as a vice presidential contender since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Late Friday night, the announcement was previewed in a press release from the Romney campaign and a tweet from Romney’s communications director. The Ryan unveiling at9 a.m. Saturday morning as Romney, with the 42-year-old congressman by his side, marked the beginning of four-day bus tour through Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

( Also on POLITICO: VP primer: Paul Ryan's Medicare plan)

Late Friday night, as speculation grew that Ryan was the pick, a source deeply involved in the vetting process said “the obvious clue is in the Romney press release” — alluding to the Norfolk event taking place at the USS Wisconsin.

Pressed, this source said: “All signs point to Ryan.”

The same source indicated that Romney had made his decision some time ago and that the other finalists had been playing the role of decoys.

By announcing now, at a moment when he’s dropping in the polls and facing rising criticism, Romney has the opportunity to change the conversation about his campaign. And in tapping Ryan, who is serving his 7th term in the House, the GOP nominee will immediately put a stop to conservative second-guessing about his campaign’s strategy. The young wonk, a Jack Kemp protege and fiscally conservative crusader, will galvanize many on the right who had been squawking the loudest about Romney.

( PHOTOS: Paul Ryan through the years)

But by tapping Ryan, Romney also is taking a significant risk. The congressman’s calling card is his “ roadmap,” a budget reform proposal that would turn Medicare into a voucher program for future recipients. In the days leading up to Ryan’s pick, a number of GOP strategists working on 2012 campaigns said that putting Ryan on the ticket could give Democrats a weapon with which to attack down-ballot Republicans.

“I can’t remember the last election the GOP won when the issue dominating the discussion was entitlements,” said one veteran Republican strategist.

Meanwhile, as word of Ryan’s likely selection spread early Saturday morning, Democrats were all but giddy.

“Vice presidential nominees almost never matter,” said Bill Burton, who helps lead President Obama’s super PAC. “But if it’s the author of the most anti-middle class budget ever, this one does.”

Sources said that Reince Priebus, a fellow Wisconsin native and chairman of the Republican National Committee, had been prepping for Ryan’s selection for the last few days. And sources said that some of the other candidates started getting calls from Romney letting them know they wouldn’t make the ticket, although Romney didn’t indicate who would.

Attention has centered in the past week on former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman and Ryan as finalists.

Marco Rubio and Chris Christie were also still said to be in the final mix, and a number of Republicans stressed that there could still be a dark horse who emerges, as has happened during the last few rounds of GOP running-mate selections.

Rubio and Portman got phone calls Friday night from Romney informing him that they were not the pick, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Romney himself seemed to offer a clue about where he was leaning earlier last week, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview on Thursday he was interested in a VP choice who has a “vision for the country…[who] adds something [to] the political discourse about the direction of the country.”

For Ryan, it will be a swift introduction to the heat lamp of national politics on a far bigger stage than one on which he’s ever performed. At a Bloomberg View breakfast a few months ago in New York City, Ryan praised Romney as a regular guy, but used terms similar to ones the Democrats have used as a pejorative — calling him “earnest” and something of a “throwback to the 1950s.”

Going a Sarah Palin route is stylistically unlike Romney, who is known for caution. But the GOP standard bearer is facing increasing calls from conservatives to go for a bolder option, such as a Ryan or a Rubio, over a safe option, such as a Portman or a Pawlenty.

On Friday evening, as Romney planned to kick off his bus tour, intense jockeying was going on for an early guess as to the identity of the VP choice. Pawlenty was in New Hampshire for Romney campaign events. A plane that flew from Boston to Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state, was being monitored closely.

The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol and Stephen Hayes, two advocates for a bolder choice, reported late Friday night that a number of signs pointed to preparations for a Ryan rollout, although they cautioned it could simply be a head-fake by a campaign looking to misdirect the press.

For Romney, the VP choice will be a chance to reset his campaign and represent it to the public, after a rocky July that has seen his personal negative ratings climb. He has faced a barrage of attacks on the airwaves and in earned media from Democrats.

They are taking a toll — a string of national polls showed Romney trailing President Obama by high single digits this week.