The discomfort of Romney’s position was already on bright display yesterday. Following the advice of Ryan’s conservative fanboys, Romney took the fight on Medicare to Obama by denouncing the Medicare cuts in the Affordable Care Act, which he described as “robbing Medicare.” Now, there are a couple problems with this line of attack. The first is that the cuts were designed not to impact patient care — it reduced excessive payments to the Bush-created Medicare Advantage program which provides equivalent services at higher cost, and it likewise reduced compensation to hospitals that treat uninsured patients in their emergency room, on the presumption that there will be fewer uninsured people.

The second, larger problem is that Ryan’s budget, in order to make the numbers add up (or pretend to add up) keeps Obama’s Medicare cuts in place. [...]

So how exactly does Romney propose to “save Medicare” by spending more money on it? I suspect his answer to this problem will be to stop having press conferences for a while and hope he doesn’t get asked about Medicare.

Bold! Game-changing! This is…well, Romney’s usual shtick, trying to play both sides of the debate, only this time it’s rendered much less credible since he’s added Mr. Tough Choices to his ticket. Does Mitt Romney really think he can duck questions about such obvious Medicare contradictions for the rest of the campaign? It doesn’t appear that Democrats are going to let up, because this is straight self-interest for them. And if this is the plan, why did Romney pick Ryan in the first place? Putting Ryan on the ticket complicates any effort to distance from his ideas. What’s the point of this again?

To me, this is the real mistake of the Ryan pick. Running openly on Ryan’s plan wouldn’t be good politically, but it would be a plan, and the media basically likes it and Ryan. To pick Ryan and then run away from the plan is only going to make conservatives angry and give the Obama Campaign the means to reinforce the shifty Romney narrative. It really couldn’t be much worse. Why pick the Ryan Plan’s #1 salesman if Ryan himself isn’t going to be able to defend it, because it isn’t Campaign Policy? I mean, if this were a “die with dignity” sort of move, that would be one thing, but Romney gives no appearance of that, as he’s still out there repeating zombie welfare lies. Good thing for Romney that money and bluster alone are all that’s needed to move the GOP, otherwise this guy would have topped out at State Treasurer of Massachusetts.