A new Gallup poll finds Americans have mixed views of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who will be confirmed as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee tonight, with 38% saying their opinion is favorable, and 36% saying it is unfavorable.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll tracking poll finds Mitt Romney getting a boost from his party’s nominating convention in Tampa this week.

Romney and President Obama are deadlocked among likely voters at 43% each. That was an improvement for Romney from Obama’s two-point lead on Tuesday and four-point lead on Monday.

Said pollster Julia Clark: “There is movement toward Romney, which is traditional for a convention. It’s small and the change is incremental, but it’s been moving the last couple of days.”

Mitt Romney’s eldest sister, who has backed prominent Democrats for office, had some reassuring words for women concerned about the Republican Party’s hard line on abortion, National Journal reports.

Said Jane Romney: “He’s not going to be touching any of that. It’s not his focus.”

Wonk Wire: How presidents shape abortion rights.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry told NBC News he “absolutely” would consider another presidential run.

Said Perry: “Oh absolutely. There’s a long time until 2016 and a lot of good things can happen.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Nevada finds President Obama with a small lead over Mitt Romney, 50% to 47%.

In late March Obama led by 8 points, in early June it was down to 6 points, and now it’s just 3 points.

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign toasted its top donors today aboard a 150-foot yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands, ABC News reports.

“The exclusive event, hosted by a Florida developer on his yacht ‘Cracker Bay,’ was one of a dozen exclusive events meant to nurture those who have raised more than $1 million for Romney’s bid.”

Stephen Colbert teaches Republicans about the female body.

[Read more…]

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said that he believes Rep. Todd Akin (R) will ultimately decide to withdraw his U.S. Senate bid in Missouri, The Hill reports.

Said Blunt: “I didn’t say I was confident … I’m hopeful he will and I believe he will. He’s an engineer, he’s a quantitative guy. I think at some point you have to add up the columns here, and my belief is that by anyway you add them up, they don’t add up.”

Meanwhile, John Fund reports “behind-the-scenes efforts to figure out a way to have Akin exit from the Senate race before the final deadline of September 25 continue unabated.”

“By the time I get to town, the delegates may have decided to nominate
Ann instead. And wouldn’t that be interesting? And do you think if Ann
were the nominee, the press would write stories about how my job is to
humanize Ann? I don’t think so.”

— Mitt Romney, introducing his wife via video to a crowd at the GOP convention in Tampa.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Connecticut finds Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) just ahead of Linda McMahon (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 48% to 44%.

The poll confirms results of a Quinnipiac poll yesterday that also found this race unexpectedly close.

Meanwhile, President Obama leads Mitt Romney in the presidential race by 13 points, 53% to 40%.

CNN reports that two people were removed from the Republican National Convention yesterday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will accept the Republican party’s vice presidential nomination tonight.

First Read: “Already a full-fledged star in the Republican Party, Ryan has the potential to rock the crowd here in Tampa. After all, he can do it with biography (his family, the loss of his father, his love of hunting) as well as policy (the Ryan budget). And it will be the biggest speech of his political career so far. But let’s also not get too carried away about the VP nominee speech; Palin’s was the exception. (Beyond her, name another impactful VP nominee speech. The memorable convo speeches are almost all keynotes, spouses and top of tickets, not the VP.)”

Matt Taibbi: “But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

“By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place…”

“If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.”

McKay Coppins: “Since Romney announced his second presidential campaign 15 months ago, his strategy in dealing with questions about his Mormon faith could be boiled down to three steps: duck, dodge, and weave. But the past two weeks, the candidate and his team of advisers have made a dramatic about-face in their approach to the religion question… an unexpected series of moves that comprise, as one campaign adviser conceded, ‘a total 180.'”

“The official explanation for the sudden shift in strategy is that the campaign was always waiting for Tampa — where they would have tight control over the choreography and the narrative — to start telling Mitt’s Mormon story… But the decision to start owning his religion on the campaign trail was more complicated — and personal — than a mere convention course correction.”

Ross Douthat: “One useful way to think about Mormon culture is to envision an outpost
of old-fashioned Yankees dropped down in the Mountain West.”

A new CBS News poll finds that 45% of voters are paying a lot of attention to the campaign, 34% say they are at least paying some attention, but 20% say they are tuning out the election almost entirely.