Romney plans to attack Perry over Social Security and Medicare

Mitt Romney 10.0

Former Bush speechwriter Mark Thiessen previews Mitt Romney's plan to beat Rick Perry:

If Perry fails to implode and continues to surge in the polls, Romney eventually will have to go on the attack — an assault his advisers say will commence “at a time of our choosing.” Romney strategists are quick to note that in his book, “Fed Up!,” Perry writes that “By any measure, Social Security is a failure” and calls the program “something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

Look at what happened to Paul Ryan when he proposed a plan to save Medicare, they say. Romney’s campaign will argue that Perry is against the very idea of Social Security and Medicare, and that he will use Perry’s book to scare seniors in early-primary states with large retiree populations, such as Florida and South Carolina.

So Mitt Romney is going to base his primary campaign around protecting Social Security and Medicare from conservatives like Rick Perry. Wow. Who knew he read Daily Kos? With a message like that, maybe he should set up an account here. If he weren't so rich, I bet Markos would comp him a subscription, just to let him tell his story.

But will that story win him the primary? Not so likely. Romney's aides can tell Republicans to look at what happened to Paul Ryan all they want, but what happened to Paul Ryan is that he became a hero in the Republican Party after he proposed eliminating Medicare. Remember what happened when Newt Gingrich said Ryan's plan was "radical"? It was Gingrich who imploded. Not Ryan.