Trying to spin his dog of a budget is making Paul Ryan very, very sad (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Earlier this week a "senior Republican strategist"
declared that the problem wasn't that Republicans wanted to end Medicare, but that "Republicans haven’t messaged it well." See, just fix the message on abolishing Medicare and it'll be fine.
Apparently that's the narrative that Republican's have settled on to explain away their Medicare debacle.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that Republicans are running into a "communications challenge" in selling their 2012 budget proposal to Americans.
Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee who authored the 2012 budget, acknowledged the GOP faces obstacles but pushed back against the notion that it is losing a communications battle against Democrats, who have assailed Ryan's proposal to significantly reform Medicare.
"I wouldn't say we're losing the communications battle -- but we have a great communications challenge," the Wisconsin Republican said on Fox News....
"Anything this big takes a while to sink in for people to understand," Ryan said. "As soon as people realize just how dire our fiscal situation is, and what our drivers are -- namely, our entitlement programs -- the more they're supportive of this."
This sort of echoes Ryan's happy talk in the midst of the confrontational town meetings Republicans faced last month."The crowds are overwhelming supportive. I'm very excited."
There's a parallel narrative among Republicans who are doing their best to run away from their own budget and Medicare debacle: they'd be all for it, except that it's not "politically feasible" because of those darned Senate Democrats. At least that's how Ryan sees it: "All that Dave Camp is acknowledging is, when you do entitlement reform, you have to have budget reconciliation that goes to the Senate. The Senate isn't even passing a budget, so we can't pass this into law if the Senate doesn't give us a budget."
No, no disarray here. And their plan to abolish Medicare really isn't fatally unpopular. It's just misunderstood.