Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes cause a bit of a brouhaha this morning with a report that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, is seriously contemplating a run for the White House.

After Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels refused to run a couple months back, Ryan (and perhaps N.J. Gov. Chris Christie) became the GOP’s last best hope for a really serious candidate with good conservative bona fides.

Don’t get me wrong, with the exception of Ron Paul (whose foreign policy views are so isolationist that he makes Pat Buchanan look like an ardent colonialist) I would vote for any Republican over 4 more years of President Obama.

But every other Republican has baggage (and I’m not talking carry-on baggage, I’m talking steamer trunk-sized baggage) that has the potential to turn off some of those independents who have indicated that they would vote for a “generic Republican” over Obama.

I’d considered writing a “why Ryan should run” post a couple months back when the Senate had its day of votes on budget plans that did not originate in that chamber—Ryan’s plan and Obama’s February budget.  My post that day illustrated what I thought was a major indicator that Ryan should run—the media had already put him at the same level as the president, if not superior.

President Obama is famously arrogant about his own abilities:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Yet, based upon all of Obama’s public performances, this simply isn’t true—but it may be for Ryan. Would anyone interested in politics miss a debate between “The One” and this guy?

Any Republican running in 2012 is going to have to come up with a plan to supplant Obamacare, get the country’s entitlements under control and get the economy moving again. Does anyone think that anyone among the current crop of GOP contenders has thought about this nearly as deeply  and completely as Ryan has? Does any of them have a grasp of the magnitude of the problem as Ryan has?

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey thinks a Ryan run is a mistake because he lacks executive experience and Democrats will run a Mediscare campaign based upon Ryan’s plan. (Again, I wouldn’t be taking this position had Mitch Daniels decided to run.)

Here’s the conundrum of a Ryan candidacy for conservatives: Is raising public awareness about America’s entitlements crisis so desperately urgent that we’re willing to accept a second Obama term in exchange for achieving it? If Ryan’s the nominee, we will at long last have that Very Serious Adult Conversation about Medicare and Social Security under the ultimate media spotlight. And even if Obama’s reelected, the political facts on the ground about entitlements will have changed come 2013 because of it. But the fact remains, decades of public dependency on those programs won’t change over the course of one campaign; a full-bore Democratic Mediscare narrative will assuredly be very, very effective. Which is to say, Ryan will be running at a heavy disadvantage despite Obama’s vulnerability on the economy. How lucky do you feel?

I won’t say that I feel lucky, but I do think we’re at a political tipping point. Democrats can run Mediscare ads all they want—and they’ll do this whether Ryan is the nominee or not—the truth is that Obama’s plan—doing nothing—will hasten the dismantling of Medicare for those who are in the program now. The choice isn’t between radical change and the status quo. The status quo is radical change.

With a modestly growing economy, President Obama probably could’ve kicked the entitlement can down the road to his successor even having served two terms. But the weak economy and his health care “reform” law have hastened the day of reckoning. The American people will have to make a decision and Paul Ryan is the best spokesman we have for the conservative side of this argument.