http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-isnt-a-deficit-hawk-hes-a-conservative-reformer/
Some excerpts:
To the extent that voters know anything about Paul Ryan — and the humbling truth for those of us inside the Beltway, where Ryan is a household name, is that most of them don’t — they probably know him as an ardent deficit hawk who is unusually fearless when it comes to cutting government spending.
Both impressions speak to a central misconception about Ryan’s policy interests: He is not primarily interested in reducing the deficit or cutting federal spending. He has voted to increase deficits and expand government spending too many times for that to be the case. Rather, the common thread throughout his career is his desire to remake the basic architecture of the the federal government. But the confusion persists because, while Ryan’s policy chops are well known, the specifics of his policies are not.
...
The truth is that the Ryan budget’s largest long-term savings don’t come from Medicaid or Medicare or Social Security, or even Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security put together. They come from everything else. Ryan says that under his budget, everything the federal government does that is not Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security will be cut to less than 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. That means defense, infrastructure, education, food safety, energy research, national parks, civil service, the FBI — all of it. Right now, that category of spending is 12.5 percent of GDP.
And this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-will-be-mitt-romneys-vice-presidential-pick-heres-seven-thoughts-on-what-that-means/
1. Both Democrats and conservatives are going to get the exact debate they wanted. I’m not so sure about Republicans.
2. This is an admission of fear from the Romney campaign. You don’t make a risky pick like Paul Ryan if you think the fundamentals favor your candidate. You make a risky pick like Paul Ryan if you think the fundamentals don’t favor your candidate. And, right now, the numbers don’t look good for Romney: Obama leads in the Real Clear Politics average of polls by more than four percentage points — his largest lead since April.
3. Related point: Two of the top contenders in the Romney campaign’s veepstakes were Ohio’s Rob Portman and Florida’s Marco Rubio. Given that there’s fairly good evidence that vice presidential candidates are worth at least a point or two in their home states, the Romney campaign’s decision to pick Ryan is evidence that they feel they need to change the national dynamic, not just pick off a battleground state.
4. Romney’s original intention was to make the 2012 election a referendum on President Obama’s management of the economy. Ryan makes it a choice between two competing plans for deficit reduction. This election increasingly resembles the Obama campaign’s strategy rather than the Romney campaign’s strategy.
(10 points in all)
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