Many House Republicans are now facing heat in their home districts because they voted Paul Ryan’s Medicare-trashing budget bill. And this might actually come as a surprise to the Republicans, said The Nation’s Chris Hayes on The Rachel Maddow Show last night. The GOP has come to believe, and the beltway media has helped confirm, that they were elected in 2010 to push through their radical vision of extreme privatization of the welfare state—which they were not. The Republicans won because of the poor economy, and the anxious mood across the country, Hayes says.

The most effective way for the Democrats to maximize on this disconnect between Republicans and their constituents, Hayes says, is to take a vote in the Senate on Ryan’s bill. This will reveal, once again, how unpopular the vote is, and then the Democrats can use the fact that they saved Medicare as a key campaign issue for the 2012 elections.

—Sara Jerving