I don't think that Paul Ryan is running for president; I really don't think he'll ever run for president. But if he does, he sure has the resentment thing down cold.

I wrote about Ryan and the budget process today over at Greg's place, from an interview that Ryan did over at NRO, and I didn't complain about the other stuff, but it really is awful:

Indeed, in almost every sense, Ryan says, Obama has been "fundamentally un-presidential" throughout the summer, "dragging his feet, failing to address the looming debt crisis -- which he knows is coming -- because he remains committed to his ideology."

"This is, unfortunately, the way he operates," Ryan says. "This is his pattern of behavior, this is his personality. For the next 18 months, it will probably be like this. It’ll be in-your-face class warfare, with bitter appeals to envy, fear, and anxiety, plus the demonization of the other side’s motives."

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After all, the thinking goes, at least Ryan and his fellow Republicans are making an honest effort to face up to a serious problem -- wouldn't it be better if, instead of demagoguery, Democrats responded with their own serious plan?

In the New York Times column over the weekend titled "Don't Scorn Paul Ryan," Joe Nocera made precisely this point, arguing that:

…while the Democratic Party might be well served in trying to use the Ryan plan to bury their political opponents, the country itself is not. The debate we need is not about whether Medicare should be reformed, but how.

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Forty Senate Republicans have now joined their colleagues in the House to support Paul Ryan’s plan that would turn Medicare into vouchers that funnel money to private health insurers. They thumbed their nose at the special election in upstate New York earlier this week that delivered a victory to Democrat Kathy Hochul, who made the plan the focus of her upset victory.

So now it’s official. The 2012 campaign will be about the future of Medicare. (Yes, it will also be about jobs, but the Republicans haven’t come up with any credible ideas on that front, and the Democrats seem incapable of doing what needs to be done.)

This spells trouble for the GOP. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans — even a majority of Republican voters — want to preserve Medicare. They don’t want to turn it over to private insurers.

It would be one thing if Republicans had consistency on their side. At least then they could take the high road and claim their plan is a principled way to achieve the aims of Medicare through market-based mechanisms. (It isn’t, of course. It would end up squeezing seniors because it takes no account of the rising costs of health care.)

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"I worship the ground the Paul Ryan walks on," said the former vice president, Politico noted via the Houston Chronicle.

Cheney made the comment while proclaiming the need to combat the national debt. That may seem an odd sentiment to those who remember that in 2002 he reportedly told then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, "deficits don't matter."

Meanwhile, the object of Cheney's affection is, of course, the current of face of the GOP's version of deficit hawkishness -- one that Democrats hope to make a liability for Republicans in 2012. Despite a united effort by Republicans in the Senate Wednesday to rally around Ryan's proposal, a number of party members have called the proposal too extreme, perhaps fearing that backing it could carry serious electoral consequences.

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Here are some words that we wish people would stop using to describe certain Republicans:

Paul Ryan: Courageous and brave

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Republican House Budget chief Paul Ryan still doesn't get it. He blames Tuesday's upset victory of Democrat Kathy Hochul over Republican Jane Corwin to represent New York's 26th congressional district on Democratic scare tactics.

Hochul had focused like a laser on the Republican plan to turn Medicare into vouchers that would funnel the money to private health insurers. Republicans didn't exactly take it lying down. The National Republican Congressional Committee poured over $400,000 into the race, and Karl Rove's American Crossroads provided Corwin an additional $700,000 of support. But the money didn't work. Even in this traditionally Republican district -- represented in the past by such GOP notables as Jack Kemp and William Miller, both of whom would become vice presidential candidates -- Hochul's message hit home.

Ryan calls it "demagoguery," accusing Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to "scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected."

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Time's Kate Pickert aptly called Ryan's task "Sisyphean" -- his Medicare proposal handed Democrats a powerful hot-button campaign issue and alienated members of his own party. Ryan seems to appreciate the political quagmire engulfing him:. First, he donned the uniform of a politician "getting real" for his explainer video: shirtsleeves rolled up, no jacket.

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Of course, we didn't need the wave of anonymous sources now bravely surfacing to tell us this. It was immediately apparent in the town hall denunciations aimed at Republican congressmen in the aftermath of their vote to pass the Ryan budget, the shocking surge of the Democratic congressional candidate in a heavily conservative New York special election, and even Newt Gingrich's (quickly disavowed) labeling of the plan as "right-wing social engineering." As numerous commentators have pointed out, if anyone should have known better, it was the newly elected Republican legislators who lambasted cuts to Medicare in the Affordable Care Act on their way to victory in 2010. Medicare is the third rail in American politics. Touch it too carelessly and you will get electrocuted.

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Huntsman was a popular and successful governor and he's got extensive foreign policy experience, but this year you're better off being a pizza magnate. So Huntsman needs to prove that he is just as conservative as the people without his extensive and respectable resume. The first step is not making Newt Gingrich's mistake in failing to endorse Paul Ryan's plan to eventually eliminate Medicare. Huntsman told ABC that he totally would've voted for the Ryan budget, and he'd repeal Obamacare:

Jon Huntsman: I would've voted for it.

George Stephanopoulos: Including the Medicare provisions?

Jon Huntsman: Including the Medicare provisions. Because the only thing that scares me more than that is the trajectory that our debt is taking.

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After he said this, Republicans and conservative pundits got very mad at him, because they are all working super-hard at making killing Medicare seem necessary and even popular. So Newt had to completely contradict himself, which isn't that unusual for him, and declare that he wants to marry Paul Ryan.

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Ryan said in a statement on his website Tuesday that he feels he can have a bigger impact by remaining in his current position rather than running for the Senate next year.

Ryan's decision not to run may open the door to a bid by former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson. Two Republicans tell The Associated Press that Thompson was considering running with Ryan out of the race. The people requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for Thompson.

Kohl announced on Friday that he would not seek a fifth term next year.

Ryan has represented Wisconsin's 1st congressional district since 1999.

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Associated Press writer Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report.

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The DCCC stepped up Medicare-centric campaigning Monday, launching the Medicare Action Center, DontEndMedicare.com. The website provides information on GOP town hall meetings and a stirring graphic comparing proposed GOP Medicare cuts ($165 million) to the amount of money lost on oil subsidies, offshoring, and tax breaks for the wealthy ($175 billion). You can also print out your very own protest sign, which reads, "Vote Republican, End Medicare."

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Ryan is chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee.

Appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Ryan said his family and supporters just started digesting the idea.

Other possible candidates include Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, former Rep. Mark Neumann, who lost in the Republican gubernatorial primary last year, and a pair of brothers who lead the Wisconsin Legislature and are closely tied to Walker and his anti-union plan -- Scott and Jeff Fitzgerald.

Kohl's surprise retirement creates at least eight open seats that could help determine the balance of power in the Senate.

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As a result, congressional Republicans unceremoniously abandoned their crackpot scheme to privatize Medicare within three weeks of voting almost unanimously to endorse it. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., explained that there was no point wasting time on a plan that had zero chance of passing in the Senate, and was certain to be vetoed by President Obama if it did.

Camp also acknowledged that as the same logic applies to the GOP's attempts to repeal the 2009 Affordable Care Act, aka "ObamaCare," his committee wasn't going to fool with that either.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, breathing smoke and fire two weeks ago, lamented that Republicans seeking budgetary consensus would need to look elsewhere after President Obama "excoriated us" for suggesting that Medicare health insurance be replaced by a voucher plan requiring seniors to comparison shop for private health insurance.

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We continue to hear that the Great Budget Debate has two sides: The President and the Democrats want to cut the budget deficit mainly by increasing taxes on the rich and reducing military spending, but not by privatizing Medicare. On the other side are Paul Ryan, Republicans, and the right, who want cut the deficit by privatizing Medicare and slicing programs that benefit poorer Americans, while lowering taxes on the rich.

By this logic, the center lies just between.

Baloney.

According to the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, 78 percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare as a way to reduce the debt, and 72 percent support raising taxes on the rich -- including 68 percent of Independents and 54 percent of Republicans.

In other words, the center of America isn't near halfway between the two sides. It's overwhelmingly on the side of the President and the Democrats.

I'd wager if Americans also knew two-thirds of Ryan's budget cuts come from programs serving lower and moderate-income Americans and over 70 percent of the savings fund tax cuts for the rich -- meaning it's really just a giant transfer from the less advantaged to the super advantaged without much deficit reduction at all -- far more would be against it.

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He is applauded by the audience.

Ryan, in response, attacks the notion that wealth should be redistributed, and says "we do tax the top."

He is booed, heartily.

The message could not be any clearer. The people -- arch-conservative Paul Ryan's people!-- have spoken. Tax. The. Rich.

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Boo hoo hoo.

"Mommy, he called me a bad name," Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan whined to reporters. "Make him stop."

OK, that's a paraphrase. The reportedly "furious" Ryan complained to PBS' Charlie Rose that Obama's budget speech "was extremely political, very partisan." An anonymous GOP aide told the Washington Post that the sainted Ronald Reagan "had the decency to insult his enemies when he was out of town."

Yeah, well, where I come from, people have more respect for somebody who says it to your face instead of behind your back. As for partisan, here's the first sentence of altar boy Ryan's scheme to balance the budget over 35 years by privatizing Medicare and cutting billionaire's taxes: "Where the president has failed, House Republicans will lead."

Elsewhere, Ryan accused the "president and his party" of exploiting economic hardship to indulge in a "reckless spending spree."

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As the government approaches its borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion, Republicans are seeking political advantage over what conditions should be attached to raising that limit.

This is a scandal -- or should be. Raising the debt limit shouldn't be subject to party politics. Economic extortion should be out of bounds.

It's bad enough government shutdowns have become an accepted part of political negotiation. But failure to increase the amount the Treasury can borrow would have far graver results.

Not only would the government be unable to issue Social Security or Medicare checks but the United States couldn't pay interest on its current debt.

We'd go into default. The full faith and credit of the United States would be in jeopardy. Treasury bonds would go into free fall. Interest rates would skyrocket. We, and most of the rest of the world, would fall into financial chaos.

The recovery is still fragile. All this would force us and most of the rest of the world into a deeper recession or worse.

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Four major positions are represented in the debate: supply-side conservatives, fiscal conservatives, neoliberals and progressives. The last three -- fiscal conservatives, neoliberals and progressives -- make valid and important points. But none has a persuasive vision of how to promote long-term American growth and equity.

The supply-siders cannot be taken seriously. The original architects of supply-side economics in the late 1970s and 1980s like Bruce Bartlett never claimed that a dollar in supply-side tax cuts would produce a dollar or more in new federal revenue, thanks to the growth the tax cuts stimulate. Somehow this was lost in the translation from economic wonkery to campaign politics. Today it is routinely claimed by Republican conservatives that supply-side tax cuts do not contribute to the deficit and pay for themselves . The latest to make this erroneous claim is Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill.

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In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama charged Republicans with seeking to dismantle venerable safety net programs and choosing tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of students paying for college or older adults on Medicare.

"To restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice - but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in," Obama said.

The criticism echoed his speech Wednesday in which he unveiled a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan over 12 years, a goal he says he can achieve with a blend of spending cuts, changes in major government health care programs and tax increases.

Obama's message represents his clearest attempt to place ideological distance with Republicans after months spent negotiating a compromise six-month spending bill that trimmed more than $38 billion from the government. Obama signed that legislation Friday.

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