Democrats are branding Mitt Romney's choice for vice president, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a tea party attack dog and stubborn ideologue who wants to end Medicare as we know it. They're right. But those are good things.

Rep. Ryan is a tea party favorite who's already had a few verbal run-ins with President Obama over the budget. He is polite and makes his points well. If that means he's an attack dog, fine. The Romney ticket could use one.

As for Medicare, the new veep pick is well known among Washington watchers for wanting to reinvent the entitlement program for people 65 and older. Right now, Medicare uses taxpayer money to pay for recipients' health care. Under Rep. Ryan's plan, the government would subsidize future retirees' purchase of health insurance from private firms. If the subsidies don't cover all the costs, seniors would have to pay the difference.

Medicare in its current form is unsustainable. The Ryan plan would cut it back — lowering its growth by $810 billion over 10 years — as part of a wider effort to rein in federal spending.

The Daily News has supported this strategy from the beginning. It isn't easy. The Congressional Budget Office determined that "most elderly people would pay more for their health care" under the Ryan plan. In an April 2011 poll, 69 percent of our online readers opposed deep cuts in Medicare. The chairman of the South Florida Tea Party denounced Ryancare as a "public policy nightmare."

There are early signs the Romney-Ryan ticket may be jittery about all this. "Romney put gentle but unmistakable distance between his agenda and Ryan's hot-potato budget proposals on Saturday," The Associated Press reported.

If that's so, Romney ought to acquire some backbone. The former Massachusetts governor has taken so many sides on so many issues, it's hard to know where he stands on anything. Picking Rep. Ryan as his running mate shows, at long last, that Romney is ready to put forth bold ideas to pull America back from the brink of financial calamity. He ought to promote those ideas as enthusiastically as he is promoting Ryan as the nation's next v.p.

REPRINTED FROM THE NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS