PALING WITH THE PAUL

It’s no secret that she’s a Ryan fan (see here and here for starters, as one Twitter pal reminded me) but as far as I know, this is the first time she’s explicitly endorsed his roadmap as her preferred blueprint for entitlement reform. Which, I think, is a big deal: Ryan’s problem all along has been that, for all the positive press he gets, he can’t get the Republican leadership to talk seriously about entitlements for fear that doing so will scare off seniors and other prized constituencies. (That’s why I was surprised by his no vote on the Deficit Commission; it would have been a good way to keep the conversation going.) Palin’s op-ed alone won’t force McConnell and Boehner to get serious, but it will give new currency to Ryan’s plan and to the project of long-term fiscal solvency generally among tea partiers and the conservative base, and they can conceivably force McConnell and Boehner to get serious. continue