Contained within this Politico article about the...er...unfortunate roll-out of the GOP "budget""plan" today, is the suggestion that today's rushed presentation was a direct result of having unwisely taken the president's bait.

Ryan, the ranking Republican on the budget committee, plans to introduce a detailed substitute amendment for the Democrats' spending plan next Wednesday -- and still intends to do so.

But he and Cantor were reportedly told by Boehner and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) they needed to move more quickly to counter Democrats' charge they were becoming the "Party of No," according to House GOP staffers.

The 19-page document, prepared by Pence's office, was distributed two days after  President Obama criticized Republicans for trashing his detail-crammed 142-page budget outline without producing a credible alternative.

As a result, not only do we have a self-inflicted Republican PR disaster, but we have some nice internal under-the-bus throwing among the power players involved on the side:

"In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan," said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.

"I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas," the person added.

"It's categorically untrue," said Pence spokesman Matt Lloyd. "Cantor as well as Ryan and the rest of the leadership have been part of this process for weeks. They not only signed off on it, but their staffs helped edit it. [...]

Still, when he was asked what purpose today's preview served, Ryan directed me to Pence's office:  "You've got to ask the conference this question, I can't answer that question."

My favorite takedown of Pence is from Yglesias who skewers him:

I've been saying this for a while now, but something people need to understand about the current state of American politics is that Rep Mike Pence (R-IN) is not a smart man. He lacks intelligence. He's been able to rise into the House leadership and even somehow acquire a reputation as a policy thinker of the right larger because it's extraordinarily rare for the media to ask a politician to answer a question about a policy issue. But when Pence is asked to do this--as Norah O'Donnell did below--he's completely unable to deal with it.

Here's Pence and Norah O'Donnell who ended up asking Pence a gotcha question in spite of herself:

But the reaction of the usually mild mannered Contessa Brewer on MSNBC might be my favorite schadenfreude-inducing video of the day:

Update [2009-3-27 3:55:57 by Todd Beeton]:Here's more from Rachel on the GOP taking the president's bait.