OH, MITT'LL WIGGLE OUT OF THIS, IF IT COMES TO THAT

Jed Lewison, Steve Benen, and the folks at Talking Points Memo are telling us that Mitt Romney has really painted himself into a corner now.

TPM:

In his attempt to stave off Newt Gingrich's surge, Mitt Romney is rapidly transforming himself today into the chief defender of Paul Ryan's Medicare plan.

Democrats are somewhat taken aback -- this is the Romney they were hoping for all along....

When the Ryan Plan -- which, as a reminder, eliminates Medicare as we know it and replaces it with a voucher system -- passed the House earlier this year, Romney did what you'd expect of a candidate trying to focus on the general election. He expressed tacit support for the ideas behind the Ryan Plan (Romney said he and Ryan are on "the same page") but he made it clear he was going to offer his own plan that was different than Ryan's....

When Romney finally did put out his plan, it was as he promised: very much like Ryan's, with a few key general election-friendly tweaks. Chief among the differences is that Romney's plan keeps Medicare in place as one option in a voluntary voucher system, while Ryan's plan scraps Medicare entirely in favor of private plans....

Today, Romney erased whatever distance was left between him and the Ryan Plan as he shifted his attention to Gingrich. Through surrogates and in campaign releases, Romney recast himself as a champion of Ryan against Gingrich's disastrous attacks early in his campaign....

Much as I would love this narrative to be true -- Romney used to say nice things about Ryan's plan while pushing a less cruel plan, but now is 100% on board with Ryan -- it will be a very difficult sell in the general election. The reason is that he's still allowing himself just enough wiggle room to be able to tell general election voters (if he gets the nomination) that he never really supported total voucherization of Medicare.

Romney still doesn't embrace every word of the Ryan plan -- go to his campaign site and you see that, under the heading "With Friends Like Newt, Who Needs the Left?," he just attacks Gingrich for attacking Ryan. He never says he supports Ryan 100%. Over here, in a campaign release, he says, yeah, he'd sign the Ryan plan as president if it crossed his desk -- but he's got a plan of his own. And that's still the one with traditional Medicare as an option.

So he can still tell Ryan fans that he's pro-Ryan, then, in the general election, tell the rest of us that, heavens to Betsy, he's not fully pro-Ryan at all, if by "fully pro-Ryan" you mean "advocating every word of the Ryan plan." He's positioned himself so that, if the Democrats say his position and Ryan's are identical, PolitiFact will declare the Democratic assertion to be a lie.

Ultimately, it's all too confusing for the average voter to follow. It's meant to be. Romney will get away with this.