Jennifer Rubin provides a window into the thinking behind Ryanmania:

Yuval Levin and Peter Wehner have a must-read column in the Wall Street Journal that argues that the Tea Party has yet to provide bold leadership on our most critical problem, entitlement reform. They cite Rep. Michele Bachmann’s hesitancy on Medicare reform. But what of the other candidates? Perry wants to have a “discussion” about Social Security. Good golly. How long would it take him to catch up to “Path to Prosperity”? It’s a bit embarrassing, actually, to have candidates who don’t have concrete plans on taxes, growth, the debt and entitlements.

Perhaps one reason why Tea Party-aligned candidates haven’t taking the lead on entitlement reform is that most self-identified Tea Partiers are against it insofar as entitlement reform involves significant reductions in entitlement spending (which it must). There seems to be a huge gap between what conservative activists and pundits think Republican constituents want and what they will actually support. Levin and Wehner make a good case that credibility as a fiscal conservative should hinge on a willingness to tackle entitlement reform, and they are correct that Bachmann hasn’t done this, but what this suggests is that Bachmann has a better understanding of grassroots sentiment on this question.

Levin and Wehner write:

A posture of bold fiscal conservatism is simply not compatible with timid evasions on Medicare reform.

What they mean to say is that it is not consistent with these evasions, and they’re right that it is “substantively incoherent,” but as they acknowledge a fiscal conservative posture is politically compatible with acting as the defenders of the Medicare status quo. After all, the Republicans just successfully ran their last election campaign doing this very thing. I imagine Bachmann and Perry hope to follow that example.

This is what makes all the talk of a Ryan bid so hard to understand. His signature issue is one that even advocates of entitlement reform understand to be politically radioactive. It is something that his party has carefully avoided in every election year for decades. Nonetheless, his admirers have concluded that a presidential election is the appropriate time to embark on a campaign of educating the public on the need for entitlement reform. Ross explains why this is unreasonable:

And it’s no insult to Ryan’s considerable gifts to say that conservatives who are counting on him to sell it [Ryan’s budget] to the American people are putting way too much stock in his powers of persuasion.

Entitlement reform is vitally important for the country, and any significant reform is going to involve massive cuts to these programs. It is no secret that most of the public does not want these cuts and a majority will penalize whichever party proposes to make them. The enthusiasm for a Ryan candidacy seems based in a belief that the opposite is true.