EZRA KLEIN DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE RIGHT

Presumably in response to this Wall Street Journal editorial urging Mitt Romney to make Paul Ryan his running mate, Ezra Klein tweets:

For Romney, the strongest case for picking Ryan may be that if Romney/Ryan loses,the right won't be able to blame it all on Romney.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 9, 2012

Is Ezra kidding? Paul Ryan is a right-wing hero. He's an embodiment of True Conservatism. That means that if he's on the ticket and Romney loses, he can get none of the blame. True Conservatism can never fail.

A follow-up from Ezra:

Sans Ryan, they can blame the out of touch Mass moderate. With Ryan, Romney did what they asked, and he lost defending their budget.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 9, 2012

Well, that's a bit closer to the truth. What the right will say is that Romney/Ryan lost because the evil Satanic liberal media grotesquely distorted the nature of the Ryan budget (by, y'know, quoting accurate numbers and facts), while demonizing Paul Ryan. The right will also say that Mitt Romney was a wussy little RINO. My guess is that most right-wingers will stress the latter (no matter how far to the right Romney actually runs). But the loss will not be blamed on the budget itself. America would have embraced its small-government, pro-freedom wonderfulness if not for the lying lies of the lie-beral media!

Do you recall which member of the 2008 GOP ticket emerged as a right-wing superstar? That's all you need to know about how blame will be assessed on the right if Romney runs with Ryan and loses.