Ryan would look great on a coin or bill.

Ryan/Jindal would cream the one. The other possible VP candidate who could assist in said creaming would be Cain, who is very cool, but I'm not sure yet that he is knowledgeable enough. Jindal assuredly is.

The beauty of Paul Ryan is that he's got the balls to put forth a serious, politically risky plan unconcerned about his political future. He wants to stay on plan, in the House.That, I believe, is where he can do the most good at this time. This election isn't going to be about foreign policy, or even Medicare per se, but about jobs, inflation and financial security. Obama should be forced to run on his putrid record that everybody is standing up to their necks in. What we don't need is for other Republicans to "go wobbly" on spending and debt and to that end, Ryan should start a side job as an economic tutor to the candidates.

Saying that Ryan has to run is like saying that on the great Chicago Bulls teams, Dennis Rodman needed to score more. Ryan is already hard at work doing something that, like rebounding for a basketball team, is indispensible to success. It is absurd to think that some other candidate, properly briefed and supported by Ryan, cannot champion his plan on the presidential stage. What we need is for a candidate to embrace that role. It cannot be Romney because of his issues with healthcare reform, but anyone else with a sharp mind and a little political courage can do it. Moreover, Ryan's lack of experience -- and arguably, even *interest* -- in foreign policy is a virtual disqualifier in the presidential race. Let the guy keep pulling down his rebounds and playing smothering defense. Running for president is a scorer's game.

Ryan should run because he is the best candidate (the first choice), but the more important reason for him to run is to let the other GOP candidates criticize his central policy initiative?

So the GOP should undermine the Ryan plan during the primaries, so it can attack Obamacare during the general election. With the result being that the GOP employs the same tactic that has served us so well before - appeal to the moderates by criticizing the real conservatives.

The problem in 2008 was not that Bush wasn't running, it was that his policies were not conservative enough, particularly in his second term. TARP, a new medicare entitlement, No Child Left Behind. Any GOP candidate who runs against the Ryan plan can count on me voting for someone else. And I suspect I will not be alone.

How do you claim to support Ryan on policy, but advocate a Gingrich strategy of attacking that policy to appear more "electable?"

Ryan said earlier that leaders change polls. Leaders change elections, too. Ryan's platform in the house is too small. His ideas--and his articulation--belong on a bigger stage. Running could do that.

Ryan in the race could change the tenor of the whole entitlement debate. I expect that Ryan's Republican opponents wouldn't use demagoguery to advance their positions--whatever these might be. They will have to seriously debate the issues or lose credibility. That's really where we want to be.

I like Ryan and his plan, but he is certainly not the Obama of the right. Obama was a stealth candidate who is masterful at politics.

About the only things Obama and Ryan have in common is they are both smart and relatively young. Obama, however, was a cipher on policy when he ran, and he was happy to keep it that way.

Look at Obamacare, his greatest (from the left's perspective, and certainly from a historical standpoint) accomplishment. He said he wanted to provide healthcare for all, but he remained enigmatic on how he was going to achieve that. In fact, he outright lied on certain aspects, such as rejecting an individual mandate and single-payer during the campaign, and claiming he would cut costs while insuring millions more. In other words, Obama was willing to say anything to get elected, to promise that we can have our cake and eat it to. He knew that the most important thing was to get in office.

I'm afraid that if Ryan is the candidate or if the GOP candidate embraces his plan, the Dems will demogogue the heck out of the Medicare issue, keeping Obama in power. I know inside-the-Beltway types admire Ryan for being willing to stick his neck out, but it won't matter if Obama is re-elected.

As I've written elsewhere, it reminds me of the Democrats in the '80s, who scored brownie points with the political class by supporting higher taxes to cure the deficit, but lost elections because of it.

I think the prospect of four more years of Obama and all that entails -- the entrenchment of Obamacare, the further receding of American power, the appointment of 3 or more justices, etc. -- means that we don't have the luxury of being righteous losers.

We must win, period. We sure as heck don't need to throw away our best electoral weapon right now, which is the drastic cuts Obamacare makes in Medicare. We used it very successfully in 2010; the Democrats are ever so grateful we are handing it back to them. It's all they got. But it's more than enough for them to win.

So take a lesson from Obama -- let's get into office first. Then we can hash out our plans. We don't have to lie. But we don't have to show all of our cards up front, either.