An illuminating moment from an interview between ThinkProgress's Scott Keyes and newly-installed South Carolina Republican Party chair Chad Connelly:
KEYES: Obviously the primary here in South Carolina is going to be a big issue and no one knows the ground game better than yourself. Do you think a candidate is going to be able to win the South Carolina primary if they do not endorse the Ryan budget?
CONNELLY: I don’t think so. That’s really getting some appeal among the conservatives, you’re going to see all of them talk to that I believe.
This is 2010 coming home to roost—and this is why I think that last year's seemingly huge win will actually be a long-term disaster for the GOP. Because many of our voters stayed home (and also because a bunch of fickle disaffected voters switched sides), the Republicans were able to elect the craziest, most right-wing House majority in living memory. This success, such as it was, has now led to unfolding debacles like the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare, which the entire GOP has bought into, from stem to stern.
And folks like Connelly are quite accurate when they say that the Ryan budget is a real litmus test in the Republican primary, except I'd add that it's not just confined to South Carolina and it's not limited only to the presidential race. The problem, of course, is that the GOP primary bears as much resemblance to actual politics as the Die Hard franchise does to actual police work. As Republican candidates up and down the ballot fight to out-do each other on their Medicare-destroying credentials, they'll make themselves more and more unelectable when they face the general electorate in November of next year. And that's only just the beginning of what 2010 will reap. Yippee-ki-yay!