Remember yesterday when I wrote this?:
I put it to you in the most sardonic, rhetorical tone imaginable: How many Tea Party congresscritters do you think will embrace Ryan's budget blueprint with the Sequester-busting Murray-Ryan provisions attached? Yeah, I'd say that's about right.
Of course, it doesn't matter all that much, any more than the Obama budget does (other than the fact that he has the power - not the legal authority, but the amputated, untrammeled power - to just impose it by Executive decree). These budget resolutions are majority-party mission statements, not actual binding legislation. And as far apart as the Ryan and Obama budgets are, you can see where this is headed - yet another last-minute continuing resolution six months from now, which will lean heavily towards the Democrats' budget priorities because the GOP will be absolutely loathe to force another government shutdown showdown barely a month away from what's shaping up to be another blowout midterm election romp. Which will undoubtedly stir up the ire of the Ted Cruz-led "suicide caucus," spitefully depress center-right turnout, and perhaps save the Senate for the Dems.
Well, the Toe-Sucker agrees - but not from quite the same direction. Or, put another way, he wants House Republicans to stir up the ire of the Ted Cruz-led "suicide caucus" about six months early:
House Republicans "would do well" to reject the budget plan unveiled Tuesday by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan because of its proposed cuts to Medicare over the next decade, political analyst Dick Morris says.
"Why should the Republican Party give the Democrats ammunition for the next five elections?" Morris, who served in the Clinton administration, asks in an op-ed piece to be published Wednesday in The Hill. "Why should House Republicans put their necks on the line every two years for changes that are proposed to take effect a decade hence?....
Ryan's plan, he says, gives Democrats immediate ammunition: "Republicans propose medicare cuts."
Also, as the president's $500 billion in Medicare benefit cuts to finance Obamacare have driven more seniors to the Republican Party in recent years, "Ryan’s prescription for long-term cuts a decade away will give them pause in switching their votes," he says.
"Democrats can easily counter the Medicare Advantage cut, which hurts one-third of all seniors, by saying that the GOP wants to cut Medicare, too."
In a phrase, "Don't muddy the clarity of the anti-ObamaCare message". Or, to expand upon that phrase, "Don't do anything conservative or constitutionalist or even fiscally responsible to alienate the geezer vote back into the Democrats' arms, even though that will alienate the GOP base back to staying home in fratricidal protest yet again."
Eh. I said yesterday, and reiterate today, that congressional budget resolutions are ephemeral vision statements, not concrete plans. Every Ryan budget has had Medicare and Medicaid reform in it; contra Morris, it didn't cost Mitt Romney the 2012 election ("SuperStorm" Sandy and voter fraud did that), and is inevitable if any hope is to be mustered of staving off the Final Collapse. The GOP can't just sit on its hands for some unknown point in the indefinite future when the coast might kinda-sorta be clear for floating a fleeting trial balloon, maybe, on a Tuesday evening when the moon hangs low in the sky and the wheat is eaten. It must identify the problem honestly and propose honest solutions that will solve it, assuming it still can be. That's what Paul Ryan has been doing for four budgets now as Chairman of the House Budget Committee.
His thanks for his efforts? Donk depictions of him pushing a wheelchair-bound grandma off a cliff to smash on the rocks below, and Tea Party depictions of him as a timid "establishmentarian" nibbling around the edges of the federal brontosaurus at best, an Obama lapdog at worst. You think he wouldn't want the Walker OMB job?
Caught between Morrisian/"establishment" timidity and stubborn Tea Party stridency, Ryan's budget may very well go down in a fusillade of friendly and unfriendly fire. And that'll make the House majority look like it can run a lemonade stand, now won't it?
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