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Hit the Republicans with a club, and they at least get the message.

The Republican National Committee this afternoon sent out a fundraising email featuring Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who chairs the House budget committee. He is the infamous author of the Ryan budget adopted by the House GOP that would end Medicare as a guaranteed benefit. Since the House Republicans passed his budget in April, the Democrats have been bashing GOPers for trying to destroy Medicare-as-we-know-it, and, according to the polls, the Dems seem to have have public sentiment on their side in this fight. So Ryan’s proposal to cut Medicare and Medicaid are hardly good selling points for the party.

The Republican money-grubbers obviously know that. In this fundraising email, which was signed by Ryan, guess which words do not appear even once: “Medicare,” “Medicaid,” and “health care.”

In the note, Ryan excoriates Washington for spending and borrowing and claims, “our most cherished freedoms and values are under attack like never before by our own government.” He boasts that the Republican Party “has a plan to put America back on the path to prosperity.” But he’s a bit short on the details, saying nothing about his proposal to turn Medicare into essentially a privatized system controlled by insurance companies.

“America is not down and out,” Ryan writes. “We have a few problems, but we can fix them with the right solutions.” He’s just not going to remind potential donors of the specifics of these solutions.