Jonathan Chait (among others) asks whether Ryan scuttled the Grand Bargain.
Everybody agrees that Ryan is the ultimate authority in his party. If Ryan wanted to cut a deal, Ryan could have cut a deal. The non-extremist defense of Ryan is that his extremist plan is a “negotiating” position designed to lead to a bipartisan fiscal adjustment with tax and entitlement reform. But literally nothing in his actual record (as opposed to his rhetoric) supports this interpretation.
Lots of anonymous advisers fret to Politico. Quite a week for that!
The Miami Herald offers another temperature-check of Medicare fears in the state where they really matter. (They matter in Pennsylvania, too, if we’re talking about bloc of older voters.)
Garrett Haake monitors Romney’s sad but understandable refusal to embrace the Medicare parts of the Ryan budget – the spending cap, without which you get a $700 billion debt hit.
At his last event of the day here in Miami, Romney did not mention Medicare or Obama’s health care reform, focusing instead on economic issues.
A nice Wilkinson-ian antidote to the “maybe Ryan is a sacrificial lamb” conspiracy theorizing.
