It's been a rough couple days for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Between pulling a Romney when talking about health-care reform and undercutting the GOP's main idea man on Medicare, many party faithful are starting to wonder just whose side he's on (for the record, Democrats are still pretty confident that he's a Republican).
Gingrich's most recent mess started this past weekend when he called Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal, in which Medicare becomes a voucher-based system “radical... right wing social engineering” (jeez, Newt, you really don't mince words, do you?). In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, May 15, Gingrich criticized the Ryan proposal, specifically the fact that it imposes “radical change” on consumers instead of allowing them to choose, somehow, whether or not they want the old-style Medicare or the new vouchers. Of course, Gingrich did not specify how this choice would work, as one would guess that it would be impossible and inefficient to have both the current Medicare system and a voucher-based system—both of which do the same thing—in existence at the same time. We'll assume he was leaving that for later in the campaign.
(from Politico)
Gingrich was, unfortunately, unable to remove his foot from his mouth after this comment, as he then said that he believed that people have a responsibility to pay for health care and that people should be required to have insurance or pay a fee if they don't. Sounds like a good idea to me, which is why I was glad when President Obama signed it into law last year; you might have heard people talking about that bill a little bit. That's right folks, Gingrich said he's in favor of an individual mandate for health insurance (he even acknowledged as much when confronted with that same terminology by host David Gregory). So don't worry kids, good ol' Newt is always in favor of personal freedom and choice, except when he isn't.
As you can imagine, the condemnation from the Republican Party was quick and pulled no punches. Ryan himself asked an interviewer: “With allies like [Gingrich], who needs the Left?” Notable conservative pundits, including such heavyweights as Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and Rush Limbaugh of... well, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, said that Gingrich's already long-shot candidacy is now finished. Gingrich, for his part, has been quick to backpedal on his comments, saying that he's always been against “Obamacare” and that he agrees with most of Ryan's budget plan.
Gingrich's candidacy for president is quickly devolving into a joke, and a dangerous one for the Republican Party. Gingrich wants to be the leader of the free world, but frankly, he barely commands respect in his own party anymore. When comparing a presidential candidate and a Congressman who just turned down a Senate run, you would think that the presidential candidate would have more pull among his professional and political peers. Instead, GOP heavyweights have made their position clear: Paul Ryan is the new standard-bearer and if you go against him then you do so at your own peril. That should be an interesting dynamic in these primaries, as Ryan's plan is not popular, so far, with independent voters or moderate Republicans, not to mention seniors; if the Republican establishment is going to demand ideological purity from their nominee, they may alienate moderates, hurting them in November.
(from The Guardian)
Meanwhile, Gingrich is struggling with his own identity, a disturbing prospect for a candidate as well-known as he is. He said after the incident that his comments were uncharacteristic of his views and that anyone that claims otherwise is lying. I'm sorry, but with a term as politically charged as “individual mandate,” the cornerstone of “Obamacare,” I refuse to believe that he didn't realize what he was saying. After adopting far-right positions in an effort to attract Tea Party voters, Gingrich is running out of ideas, and seems desperate for something to set him apart from the crowd. He also told reporters that his positions would “evolve openly” over the course of the campaign, but after over three decades in politics, how much patience are GOP primary voters going to have while he decides what he does and does not believe? And how much are they going to trust that they are really his positions, and aren't just political calculations?
Whichever way you look, Gingrich seems to be ramming into bigger and bigger stumbling blocks on his path to the nomination. Maybe we should all give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his positions really are evolving throughout his campaign. Even if that's true though, would it help his campaign? What's worse in the minds of Republican voters: the fact that he attacked golden boy Paul Ryan for political points, or the fact that he was against the individual mandate before he was for it before he was against it? Only time will tell, but either way, Gingrich's already long odds just got a whole lot worse.
(Hat tip to CNN for most of the facts in this article, including Newt's quotes from the Meet the Press interview)
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