Calling All Townhallistas

Have any readers here been to a recent Paul Ryan town hall meeting? There's one exchange from Milton that's in the press today http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/20/paul-ryan-wealthy-tax-breaks/ but I'm wondering if anyone here has eyewitness testimony to share.

Boy howdy, the Republicans sure have picked the Everest of political mountains to try and reduce to rubble (see the most recent poll results http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/20/968648/-WaPo-ABC-Poll:-84-percent-oppose-GOP-Medicare-plan). Is anyone aware of an actual Republican battle plan, though? There's been a fair amount of advance sniping, particularly on the Op-ed pages of the WaPo and the WSJ. That's mostly just conservative pundits tossing slop buckets of faux-data down from the parapets, to the infotainment media personalities waiting below. Ever thus, doncha know.

But what's the Big Strategy? Where's the Frank Luntz list of talking points? Fear, as always, will play a major roll. Come to think of it, the bigger the challenge, the higher the setting on the ol' Fear Machine (see Iraq Invasion, Selling of). What if they do drive the Debt Ceiling circus over the cliff? (interestingly, the general public is convinced that the ceiling shouldn't be raised, while virtually every business and financial organization is telling Congress to stop misbehaving and do it).

As the risk of seeming like a foil-hatter here, what happens when foreign Treasury note buyers conclude that our government is too frickin' whacked out to be trusted to honor its debt obligations? How about a sudden inflationary leap and another recession, folks? And Voila, there's your Fear and Loathing, lots of it. Perhaps a big enough dose that the citizenry will finally trade away that old safety net for the exhilarating promises of the Free Market Paradise.

Oh boy. It's time for some of daddy's happy medicine.