With Mitt Romney's pick of Rep. Paul Ryan as his Republican running mate, Obama surrogates immediately sought to define the congressman as a wild-eyed ideologue set on slashing Medicare and other popular entitlement programs.
Ryan is a darling of both the GOP's Tea Party wing and establishment fiscal conservatives for his long-standing call for a deep overhaul of government entitlement programs. But Democrats also have held up the House Budget Committee chairman as the poster boy for a GOP agenda they contend favors the wealthy over the middle class.
The Obama campaign charged that Ryan, as architect of the GOP House budget plan, has advocated additional tax cuts for millionaires and deep cuts in education programs and would turn Medicare into a voucher system.
"As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement. "Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes."
Rep. Steve Israel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, called the Romney-Ryan ticket "a match made in millionaires heaven" and telegraphed that Democrats plan to home in on Ryan's Medicare plan
"They'll be a nightmare for seniors who've earned their Medicare benefits," Israel said. "For the last 18 months, we've said Republicans will have to defend the indefensible — their vote to end Medicare."