Over at The American Scene, Peter Suderman looks into why it is that politicians are so ineffective at cutting the size of government, particularly when they’re people who talk all the time about cutting government:

He then says:

I won’t abuse that phrase to mean that he thinks all is lost. I’ll agree that conservatives need to learn how to subvert the system a bit better. Twenty years prior to their appearance, Reagan or Gingrich’s victories would have been unthinkable. But they were based on a realistic notion of making an appeal to voters and spelling things out.

In other words, conservatives haven’t done a very good job of explaining how they want to deal with entitlements. Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the few people talking about this — my only question is why aren’t there more? Even within the conservative caucus?