Paul Ryan does not have many full-throated, unapologetic defenders left in the upper ranks of the Republican Party.

The House Budget Committee chair’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher plan that would steer federal money away from patient care and into the accounts of private insurance companies polls worse than Herbert Hoover’s economic recovery plan did in 1932. It has already cost the GOP a congressional seat from upstate New York and it is likely to play a critical role in defeating Republican candidates across the country next year.

So even the most conservative members of the U.S. House have put distance between themselves and Ryan, the Janesville congressman who convinced all but a handful of House Republicans to back a plan that guts Medicare while maintaining George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and giveaways to multinational corporations that shutter U.S. factories and ship jobs overseas.

But Ryan has finally found a defender.

State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, has stepped up as a champion of Ryan.

Read the full article here:  http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/article_5f7ca108-9500-5b4b-9030-14db7bb9a04c.html