Lipstick on an Elephant

Robert Shrum says Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal will derail any attempt at the Republican Party to remake itself in the eyes of voters.

“Not long before the Ryan budget sailed through the House on a nearly lockstep Republican vote–only 10 Republican stepped back from the political abyss–one freshman member comforted himself with the notion that ‘it’s pretend … We know it’s dead on arrival in the Senate.’ But it will be very much alive as a defining campaign issue in 2014, and unless the GOP turns from its rigid ideology, in 2016 too. And so far, what’s plainly and decidedly dead, for all the Beltway blather about it, is the Republican makeover.”