Well that didn't take long. Conservative columnist and pundit David Frum has a new opinion piece up at CNN that is highly critical of Romney's decision to pick Paul Ryan as his running mate. His reasoning is similar with what many of us have been saying around here: It turns the presidential election into a highly ideological battle and weighs down Romney with the mess that is the Ryan budget. "The least ideological Republican candidate since 1968 has committed himself to the most ideological Republican program since 1964," Frum writes. "Democrats must be stunned."
Frum admits that with his choice of Ryan, Romney has fallen into a huge Obama trap:
This year, an incumbent even more embattled than George H.W. Bush has his own preferred election theme. He doesn't want to debate his own record, which is pretty dismal. He wants to debate the record of the congressional Republicans elected in 2010, a bunch radically less popular even than the president himself.
You'd imagine that Romney's job was to refuse the Democratic invitation, to choose his own ground for the election, and to keep his distance from the congressional GOP. You'd imagine, but you'd be wrong.
Instead, Frum says that Romney is now linked inextricably with all the details of Ryan's plan. Instead of talking about Obama's record, Romney will be talking about Medicare, and that's not a good thing for the GOPers, Frum laments.
(Romney) has effectively adopted Paul Ryan's agenda as his own: big immediate cuts in spending, a dramatic cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% and a bold reform of Medicare for those 55 and under.
Obama's message in 2012: "Forget the economy. It's Medicare, stupid!"
The Romney-Ryan response? "We agree. Medicare it is."
In response to conversatives who say "Well, Reagan was ideological in 1980 - and he still won," Frum counters that Reagan did not run a ideological campaign. "Precisely because party conservatives trusted Reagan's ideological commitment, they allowed him space to move to the center," Frum says. No such luck with Romney, who party conservatives still don't really trust.
As a result, Romney now has Ryan's disastrous budget wrapped tightly around him like an albatross. Frum concludes:
(Romney) has been constrained first to endorse Paul Ryan's budget plan (which he did in December 2011 after months of attempted evasion), to endorse a cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% (March 2012), and now finally to choose Ryan himself as his running mate. No leeway - and now no exit.
Frum sometimes isn't afraid to buck the party establishment. Still, his quick and harsh pounding of Romney's VP choice is still, in Frum's words, quite stunning, imho. I don't expect things to be rosy in Tampa, or in the fall, for Mittens.