If Ryan's plan is, as the pundits describe it, "serious" and "thoughtful"

[Proud Liberal Dem]

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/gop-candidates-tip-toe-on-ryans-medicare-plan.php?ref=fpa

why are Republicans from Romney on down trying to "tiptoe" around it and/or diverting attention away from themselves and onto President Obama's bloody "Medicare cuts"? It sort of reminds me of how Republicans treated the "birther" issue (i.e. avoiding the issue directly but subtly encouraging their base to keep running with it because it was helping them politically against President Obama). It seems like they're trying to engage "stealth mode" on the issue. Make no mistake about it, they want it.

[BlueStreak]

1. That's obvious

Because most people don't want to see Medicare and/or Social Security destroyed.

The more difficult question is exactly how to attack the plan. It is very easy to attack Ryan and Romney on a personal level. That should normally be avoided, especially when the merits of the arguments themselves are so strong. But there really are questions of personal character here -- important ones.

We have Romney who has been absolutely secretive, but we certainly know he oversaw illegal tax shelters while chair of the audit committee at Marriott. And there are plenty of indications in the ONE tax return that he has released that he may have made quite a habit of using abusive shelters. That is not just a character issue. It also indicates where his head is with regard to the middle class.

And with Ryan, we have a guy who apparently participated in a felony -- insider trading ahead of the 2008 meltdown. And more delicately, we have a sad picture of a young man being the one discovering his dead father, and then evidently turning to radical right-wing ideologies of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and others, and these radical ideas are now the heart of the program they are trying their best not to talk about publicly. One wonders hos a person can be as cold-hearted, almost sociopathic as this ideology indicates, but it really does make sense if triggered by that horrible event in his teen years. How can there be a nice way to talk about a person who either should be in prison for illegal insider trading, or at least should be in therapy to deal with his issues?

[gkhouston]

2. I'm trying to remember the last time a plan was deemed "serious" and "thoughtful"

and it didn't mean, "Stop laughing and take this seriously!" and/or "Please, don't think about the details." If something truly is serious, shouldn't we be able to figure that out without being told?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. You'd think so

However, this is how he and his pet budget is being portrayed. They take the fact that he came up with this plan, ostensibly on his own, as some kind of credit to his ingenuity, damn the details. I'm starting to hear "what's Obama's plan?" start to creep into the discussion. Apparently, everybody's already forgotten about the fact that the Democrats' plan is over 40 years old and, while it may need some fine-tuning, it doesn't need to be abolished. Ryan creates a "budget" that will act as a wrecking ball for the program and then the pundits turn around and demand the Democrats to produce a plan of their own. Talk about "false (phony) equivalences!"

[gkhouston]

4. I'll eat my hat if his "brilliant plan" isn't an ALEC artifact. n/t