Look what Matt Yglesias found in his inbox.
Yes, that's a message from Rep. Paul Ryan in an RNC fundraising letter "aimed at the base." In case you can't read it:
"America is at a tipping point. 14 million Americans are unemployed and 9.3 million are underemployed. Our debt has grown over $4 trillion in less than three years and will be above $16 trillion before the end of 2012. The safety net for the poor is coming apart at the seams and no one in Washington seems to care."
As Steve Benen says: "You’ve. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me."
Ryan is the one swinging the machete at the safety net precisely because he doesn't care. Put it this way: there's only one party in Washington trying to slash spending on unemployment aid, student loans, food stamps, and job training, and I'll give you a hint, it's not the Democrats.
You know it, I know it. Anybody who is really paying attention and isn't a Villager knows it. We can read this and know it's an absolutely brazen attempt by the Republicans to answer to income inequality, to high unemployment, to economic insecurity and try to make a buck off of the national zeitgeist.
It will probably work. Ryan and the rest of the Republicans are masters at twisting the idea that any call for tax increases by Democrats, even just .05 percent on the people making at least $1 million is a tax that will trickle down pain. And they'll be able to convince their diehard base, and the Very Serious People in the Village, that they've got all the answers to fixing the income inequality and economic pain. And their base and the Very Serious People will lap it up, and truly believe that block grants and vouchers and bootstraps and all the Republican fetishes are good things, because they're the people that believe their own lives will be improved if Jamie Dimon is allowed to let his unregulated and untaxed freak flag fly.
The good news, as Benen says, is that Republicans now think that appeals to save the safety net are going to work with Republican donors, and that means "it’s probably safe to say the Occupy movement has already changed the national conversation in rather fundamental ways." Let's hope that Super Congress Democrats and Harry Reid catch up quickly.