In choosing House Budget Committee Chairman Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, Governor Romney has made a good choice, and it shows that Romney has his eye on one of the most important issues in this election -- Washington's out of control spending. However, Paul Ryan is not the bold conservative leader or boat rocker grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers were hoping for.



Ryan is a good man, a strong family man and one who by all appearances lives according to conservative principles; he will help reassure social conservatives that Republicans stand for traditional values.



While Ryan gets a lot of credit among fiscal conservatives for having the gumption to propose a plan to balance the budget, his plan takes 28 years to do so. It is hardly the kind of radical change in Washington's culture of spend, borrow and tax that Democrats make it out to be, and conservatives think is required to save our country from bankruptcy.



But the Ryan plan is a start, and if Romney and Ryan are elected -- AND get a Republican majority in the House and Senate -- a bolder budget plan building on Ryan's work might yet emerge from a Romney/Ryan administration.



To lock-up the support of those 4 million independents and right-of-center voters who walked away from the Republicans in 2006, but came back in the Tea Party wave in 2010, Governor Romney needed to make a bold choice. Paul Ryan is a good choice, but not a bold choice.



In selecting Paul Ryan, Governor Romney has chosen a running mate who has many small government constitutional instincts, but who has not set about translating those instincts into the bold action conservatives have been looking for.



However, Paul Ryan knows Obama's spending problem better than anyone. If in choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate Governor Romney is signaling that he plans to make Obama's spending, deficits and debt a centerpiece of his campaign -- then Paul Ryan's selection is a good sign to conservatives that the campaign is headed in the right direction.