Newt Gets It: Ryan Plan is Toxic to Voters
So now we know how to prod the Wall Street Journal into protesting Obama-Hitler comparisons: join those comparisons to a word of criticism of the Paul Ryan budget.
The Journal dumped today on Newt Gingrich's long history of wild overstatement:
the Georgian's weakness as a candidate, and especially as a potential President—to wit, his odd combination of partisan, divisive rhetoric and poll-driven policy timidity.
In his recent campaign book, "To Save America," he describes Mr. Obama as bent on leading a "secular–socialist machine" that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." ... Mr. Gingrich speaks loudly but shrinks from hard choices.
Good points, and they could be extended at some length to include e.g. Gingrich's endorsement of Dinesh D'Souza's description of Obama as motivated by Kenyan anti-colonial ideology, Gingrich's role in the lower Manhattan mosque debacle, etc. etc. etc.
But unfortunately, the trigger for today's Journal attack was not Gingrich's divisive or racially provocative statements. The trigger was actually a wise statement: a caution against committing the GOP to a huge rework of Medicare into a means-tested program that left more and more American seniors to pay more and more of their health insurance costs out of their own pockets.
The Ryan plan has become party orthodoxy, true. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer proclaimed it a political capital offense to express public doubts about the plan.
But as Gingrich learned the hard way: the American public will not accept this kind of reform and will smash any politician who tries to force it upon them. There are ways to reduce the fiscal burden of Medicare, but telling seniors to buy their own damn healthcare is not going to be one of them. I wish it were somebody other than the Kenyan-anticolonialism-sharia law candidate making that argument, but it's an important argument from any source.
The Journal argues that Gingrich's own past failure trying to implement such a plan is reason not to listen to him now:
The irony is that Mr. Gingrich's own history of political failure on health care has made Mr. Ryan's proposals all the more necessary. In 1995, Mr. Gingrich pushed a "Medicare Plus" reform through Congress that shared many of the same features as Mr. Ryan's. It would have cut $270 billion from Medicare over seven years, while giving seniors a premium-support choice to join HMOs. President Clinton vetoed it, which along with Mr. Gingrich's refusal to compromise helped precipitate the government shutdown.
I guess the argument is: who are you going to listen to on the whole "sitting on hot stove" question. The cat who tried it once already? Or the cat who sees the red glowing countertop as a beguiling invitation?
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