Gawd, Michael Gerson Is The Chumpiest Chump Romney Ever Hornswoggled!

Romney aimed his choice of Paul Ryan as VP with that tiny, tiny, microscopic elite of 300 (or so) "journalists" - like Gerson! - specifically in mind:

In the fight Romney has picked, Ryan is an advantage. He is the best policy thinker and best communicator among the rising generation of conservative reformers. He combines a sober realism about a teetering, unsustainable entitlement system with a bubbly, Jack Kemp-like belief in the promise of unleashed enterprise. ... Unlike a recent Republican vice presidential nominee, you can't put him on the spot. He is informed, levelheaded and persuasive. And he is already Barack Obama's most persistent, effective economic critic.

The charge of radicalism will not survive exposure to Ryan himself. The notion that he is merely a "base pick" is lazy.

...In his single-minded pursuit of health care reform, Obama sacrificed many things, including his purity on entitlement cuts. More than $700 billion in Medicare savings was devoted not to shoring up Medicare but to funding Obamacare. Republican proposals for Medicare reforms, in contrast, exempt seniors 55 and older from changes. So only one candidate has pursued Medicare cuts that undermine services to current seniors – and it is not Romney. Sen. Marco Rubio, by the way, won election in Florida after endorsing Ryan's "Roadmap," with a variant of this message: Protect current seniors without bankrupting their grandchildren.

...Romney – who has so often stroked the voters in the past – has suddenly called their bluff. It is both the assumption of a risk and the emergence of a leader.