Top Republicans kicked off the push for the hearts and minds of reporters covering the Republican National Convention by making the case that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have survived the attacks on Ryan's plan to shift Medicare toward a voucher system.
"This talk about how the Ryan Medicare plan is going to be a huge problem for the Romney-Ryan ticket is just not the case," Republican pollster Whit Ayers, who heads the strategy group Resurgent Republic, told a gathering of the press at a Tampa hotel Monday morning.
The group's chairman, former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, argued that voters are accustomed to Democrats' "mediscare" attacks.
"Every election the Democrats are going to say the Republicans are cutting Medicare, because they've said it every election for the last 25 years," he said. "The American people have seen through that, and that's why I thought Romneys choice of Ryan, for a lot of good bold reasons, was not as risky as a lot of people made it out to be."
He noted that Romney appears to be staying even in the polls after fierce Democratic attacks.