TEABAGGERS ATTEMPT TO SET ALL-TIME HUMAN SHAMELESSNESS RECORD

If they can get away with this, after what they spent 2009 and 2010 bitching about, then their ability to gull the public is limitless:

Tea Party To Push Paul Ryan Medicare Plan In Town Halls

... Thousands of Tea Party movement activists are expected to descend this month on town hall meetings across key battleground states as part of an intensifying campaign ahead of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

Their priority is a plan to slash Medicare costs proposed by House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which could gain momentum now that a debt-limit deal between President Barack Obama and Congress has made potential Medicare cuts a centerpiece of the deficit debate....

"The August town halls are going to be, potentially, a referendum on Democrats who don't care and Republicans who've dared to offer real policy solutions, particularly on things like entitlements," said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks....

The unbelievable chutzpah. They whine for a couple of years about how Obama better keep his filthy Kenyan hands off their Medicare, and now their Koch masters are going to try to trot them out as an Astroturf army, no doubt arguing (as Ryan and other Republicans already have) that the Ryan plan is the plan that saves Medicare, while not doing what Ryan wants will destroy it.

Will the rank-and-file 'baggers actually do as their bid? I won't be surprised if they do.

And if they do, they probably don't need a complete PR triumph to have a pro-GOP impact at the polls in 2012 -- they just need to sow doubt:

Robert Blendon, who teaches health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, says elderly voters fear the Ryan plan could undermine support for Medicare among younger taxpayers by denying current benefits to future retirees.

But the current Democratic edge might disappear quickly if elderly voters associated Obama with program cuts that could come under the deficit-cutting deal.

"If their take-away is that neither party stood up for us, Medicare won't play a big role," said Blendon....

Exactly. The debt-ceiling deal undermines the Democrats' advantage, and now here come the Kochistas to confuse us about whose plans gut Medicare more. The Republicans are still the bigger Medicare-gutters by far, but as long as the public is in a state of uncertainty about that, the Kochsters have us just where they want us.