THE toddler in the elephant suit at the Paul Ryan rally in Wisconsin looked a bit cross. Pink with heat, he squirmed and pulled at his furry head and trunk. But the boy’s father was determined, holding his son up for the Republican vice-presidential nominee to see. At last Mr Ryan noticed. A Halloween costume, he laughed. It’s great to be home. The rally, in a college gymnasium, was a few miles from his congressional district. Mr Ryan offered some family news. A day before in Janesville—the town where he was brought up and where his family still lives—he had bought his children Halloween costumes. Soon, he confided, he would take his ten-year-old daughter on her first deer hunt. The crowd roared.

They cheered again when Mr Ryan turned to his favourite subject, curbing government spending, circling his argument back to the boy in the elephant suit. America’s debts guaranteed a “diminished future” to the kids preparing trick-or-treating costumes today, he sorrowed: a moral failure. Questioned by a union member anxious about jobs, he defended capitalism as the best safety net. America’s system of liberty and free enterprise, he declared, has done more for the poor than any other system yet designed.

The rally captured the essence of Mr Ryan’s political pitch, and of the argument made by supporters that the 42-year-old is emerging as a natural leader of the right. Two different creeds have swept Republicans to victory in recent memory. George W. Bush secured a first term by painting conservatism as a compassionate, classless creed, but then expanded both the government and its debts. In a backlash, tea-party activists and their allies vowed to shrink the state, damning both Barack Obama and Mr Bush for profligacy. That brought dividends in 2010, but left the Republican movement filled with what one party grandee calls “the guys with pitchforks”, whose electoral support is deeper than it is broad.

Supporters hail Mr Ryan as a hybrid: a cheerful, deer-hunting, family-loving, Midwestern fiscal conservative, and a seven-term congressman for a working-class corner of a state that has backed Democrats for president since 1984. Even Wisconsin Democrats call Mr Ryan likeable, while deeming his Washington voting record extreme. “He’s not some kind of angry, mean person,” says Tim Cullen, a state senator whose seat overlaps Mr Ryan’s.

Mr Ryan is not exactly a deficit hawk. A tax-cutting, entitlement-curbing budget that he drafted in 2011 would not balance the books until about 2040. He is a spending hawk, who—supporters suggest—has identified a vacancy in American politics for a morally driven fiscal conservatism and truth-telling that cuts across party and class lines. In short, they sell Mr Ryan as a sort of compassionate fiscal conservative.

Mr Ryan is a policy wonk and old Washington hand, even if he claims to be an outsider, sleeping on a camp bed in his Capitol Hill office. But he has developed the “vocabulary” to sell smaller government to blue-collar voters, enthuses a prominent Republican. His success, according to Tom Price, a congressman from Georgia and an ally, involves tone and temperament, a willingness to reach across party lines and Mr Ryan’s conviction that Americans are ready for a “grown-up conversation” about deficits and entitlements.

Yet holes lurk in those claims. For one thing, Mr Ryan rarely reaches across the aisle. He has backed little in the way of substantive bipartisan legislation, earning a reputation for putting ideological purity ahead of deal-making. Nor is his district quite the Democratic bastion boosters describe: voters there narrowly backed Barack Obama in 2008, but voted for Mr Bush by a hefty margin in 2004. At present it leans mildly Republican.

As for compassion, Democrats in Washington grant that Mr Ryan is “not a bad guy”. But a senior figure calls “unconscionable” the way Mr Ryan plans to offset tax cuts that would greatly benefit the rich by slashing budgets for food stamps, health care for the poor, and so on. Such criticism wounds Mr Ryan, who has privately asked government officials to stop saying that his budget plans would harm autistic children. Tough, respond the critics. Mr Ryan’s plans for Medicaid (health care for the neediest) would indeed hit such programmes as respite care for families with autistic children. Choices have consequences.

Meanwhile, grassroots Republicans at Ryan rallies in Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin take a less sunny line than their idol. They express relief that Mr Romney chose him, rather than a moderate. They call Mr Ryan a budget whizz who knows how to slash spending, and will restore a work ethic to a country being ruined by welfare. They praise his pro-gun, anti-abortion record, and what a Wisconsin fan terms Mr Ryan’s willingness to “destroy” environmental regulation. Compassion gets short shrift.

Still awaiting all those home truths

As for a grown-up fiscal debate among the wider public, Mr Ryan’s vice-presidential run has not done much to encourage one. “Leaders lead by putting specifics on the table,” cried Mr Ryan in Wisconsin. He then offered no specifics as to how the Romney-Ryan tax and spending plans might add up. That is not wholly Mr Ryan’s fault. His boss has not just made a virtue of fiscal vagueness; as the election nears, Mr Romney has seen his poll ratings rise as his tax-and-spending plans become ever-vaguer.

If Mr Romney wins, Vice-President Ryan would be plunged into wrangling with Congress, mostly behind closed doors. An Obama victory might pose tougher questions. Mr Ryan is also running for his congressional seat, and would be free to put his new fame behind his belief that shrinking the state is an argument conservatives can win. For now, except at rallies packed with fans (and baby elephants), it is an untested bet.

Economist.com/blogs/lexington