It is my belief that the Republicans and Romney believe they have set a clever trap by selecting Ryan as the Vice Presidential candidate. He will be used as a Siren waving seductively from the deficit rocks, hoping he can entice the Democrats to wreck their vessels on those shoals.
Follow my thinking below the fold.
President Obama in his first term was noted for his effort to be centrist and bi-partisany. We know that he got nowhere in these efforts with a truculent, petty, selfish, self-centered Republican Party that cared more about itself than the well-being of the country or its inhabitants.
Every move to the middle by Democrats was countered with two steps further to the right by the Republicans. We now find ourselves in a world where the Overton window is the Overton Sliding Glass door leading out to the patio where Grover Norquist is serving drinks and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are barbequing for the Koch Brothers and their invited guests.
And now Paul Ryan enters stage right. There is no one in the world who personifies deficit hysteria and budget cuts more than the "serious" "bold" "adult" Congressman Ryan.
The Ryan Budget is considered Draconian by most and completely unworkable. The only reason the Ryan budget exists is to be, as someone here labeled it,"Republican budget porn". The Ryan budget provides an obscenely far far far right place to begin "negotiations' before moving to the Simpson Bowles type "compromise" of simply far far right with "painful" solutions that provide pain exclusively to the poor and middle classes along with the ill and the elderly.
The trap for the Democrats will be legitimizing any part of the man and his goals. If they do that, they give away the game up front. Given a choice between Republican and Republican lite, real Republican wins every time against the faux. This is why so many Blue Dogs were defeated in 2010. This is a lesson that needs to be memorized and internalized by the Democrats in this race. They can't be more austere that Romney/Ryan and they can't even begin to match them. Their only real option is to pivot and become loud, full throated, social and economic justice FDR Democrats.
I can't say that I am personally sorry about that. Let Democrats be Democrats and recover their historical legacy of being the party that truly represents the 99% (thank you Occupy!)