Voters split evenly on Ryan Medicare plan -- and that's just Republicans

The Hill reports:

Republican primary voters are evenly split on the Medicare aspects of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan, with 41 percent supporting it and 43 percent opposing it, according to a national telephone poll [Dick Morris] conducted on June 18-19 among 700 likely Republican primary voters...

The survey’s findings suggest that even among the base Republican voters, the Ryan plan is vulnerable to attack on the Medicare issue.

Anything the sleazeball Morris is associated with leaves a bad taste, but his polling has always seemed legit.

If Ryan's plan is in that much trouble with voters in his own party, how is the GOP going to sell it to the rest of America? Morris has one idea:

However, voters strongly supported an alternative to the Ryan plan that would combine its flat fee approach with a safety net feature to protect against catastrophic illness. This additional feature might well provide a way for House Republicans to mute the potential of this issue as a negative in the 2012 elections.

Told that “some say that a better plan would be to use the Ryan model of a flat payment but to include a safety net so that the government would pay all of a senior citizen’s medical costs if the illness was severe and their health insurance coverage would not pay for it,” Republican primary voters approved of the alternative plan by 53-29. Men agreed by 58-28 and women overcame their opposition to the Ryan plan, agreeing with the new proposal by 49-29.

But remember, those are only Republicans. It's going to take quite a sales job to keep the Medicare issue from sinking the GOP next year.