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.
