Actually the attack on Paul Ryan has already begun, but here’s some ammunition for present and future attacks.

Ed Morrissey posted an article at HotAir today about Erskine Bowles‘ comments on Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. As you remember, Erskine Bowles was the co-chair of Barack Obama’s deficit committee (the one that President Obama appointed and then totally ignored the conclusions of). Erskine Bowles is a Democrat budget wonk and a presidential adviser. His committee made serious recommendations about the deficit that were not even seriously discussed by President Obama.

HotAir posted what Erskine Bowles said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:

“Have any of you met Paul Ryan? We should get him to come to the university. I’m telling you this guy is amazing, uh. I always thought that I was OK with arithmetic, but this guy can run circles around me. And, he is honest. He is straightforward. He is sincere.

And, the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion…just like we did.

The President came out with his own plan and the President came out, as you will remember, with a budget and I don’t think anyone took that budget very seriously. Um, the Senate voted against it 97 to nothing. He, therefore, after a lot of pressure from folks like me, he came out with a new budget framework and, in the new budget framework, he cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years. And, to be candid, this $4 trillion cut was very heavily back-end loaded. So, if you looked at it on a 10 year basis and compared apples-to-apples, it was about a $2.5 trillion cut.”

Erskine Bowles did not come out in support of Paul Ryan’s budget, but his statement shows an obvious respect for the budget (and for Paul Ryan). At some point we have to stop accusing people of pushing granny over a cliff and actually start looking at where we are and what we need to do to avoid going over the cliff ourselves. I believe Paul Ryan would be a wonderful person to lead that discussion.