Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will announce his selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as vice presidential running mate on Saturday, multiple news outlets have confirmed.
The announcement will come during a speech in Norfolk, Virginia, reports NBC News, The Huffington Post, CNN and the Associated Press. The AP cites a "Republican official" in its report.
NBC broke into Olympic coverage to report the news; CNN has announced that it will begin airing a special report on the vice presidential choice at 7 am EST, a full two hours before Romney will make the announcement on Saturday.
Ryan was the preferred choice of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, as he has become one of its top leaders in the House of Representatives. The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan put together a divisive budget, called "The Path to Prosperity," that would have re-made Medicare into a voucher-based private insurance system for those born after 1956, and repealed the majority of President Obama's health reform, The Affordable Care Act.
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While Romney was thought to be perhaps leaning toward former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty or Florida senator Marco Rubio, he received pressure from conservatives to choose Ryan. A recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal urged Ryan's selection, and as the New York Times noted on Friday, so did the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, which praised Ryan's budget proposal.
The selection comes at a time in which Romney is seeking to re-take headlines, after weeks of questions about the investment firm he founded, Bain Capital, and a continuing scuffle over his refusal to release past tax returns. Nevada senator and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he was told that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years, though he refuses to reveal his source.
He also recently returned from a difficult trip to overseas, during which he question London's preparedness for the Olympic Games and drew criticism for comments he made in Israel.
The Republican convention is set to begin August 27, in Tampa, Florida.
