In defense of Newt Gingrich…..

This post is dedidcated to commenter Stu.

What does it say about today’s Republican party that a Presidential candidate cannot state the truth about Paul Ryan’s budget plan without immediately being pummeled into submission?

Here’s what Gingrich said:

 I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.  I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.  I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.  But there are specific things you can do.  At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called “Stop Paying the Crooks.” We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington.  We–between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks.  And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa’s agreed to help solve it.  You can’t get anybody in this town to look at it.  That’s, that’s almost $1 trillion over a decade.  So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.

MR. GREGORY:  But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.

REP. GINGRICH:  I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump.  I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the–I don’t want to–I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.

And right after he said that-all the devils from hell came swarming out. Conservatives excoriated him. In Iowa, television cameras captured a humiliating exchange with a voter who denounced his attack on Ryan and urged him to ”get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself.” On Tuesday, Gingrich called Ryan and apologized. Now why did he have to do that? Especially when the concerns he expressed are quite valid.

Because that’s what you have to do in the GOP when a man has been anointed as “serious” about the budget. To criticize the author of that budget as being a soulless and uncompassionate man-which Ryan’s budget is, completely uncompassionate-is somehow ” ideologues bent on heated rhetoric”.  People criticized Gingrinch again and again, because in today’s GOP it has now become an article of faith that Paul Ryan’s budget is Holy Writ. To even ask questions about it is considered blasphemy somehow. Never mind that Ryan’s budget doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing-and many Republicans are starting to back away from it themselves-Mitch McConnell is letting it slowly twist in the wind in the Senate-Ryan’s budget is now a litmus test of “seriousness”.

Joshua Green of the Atlantic has probably stated it correctly that the world has been turned upside down-and GOP presidential candidates have to now genuflect to seven term hack from Wisconsin who idolizes Ayn Rand.

The budget is important because it distills and defines what had previously been a powerful but amorphous force. For two years, the Tea Party has shaped Republican politics, lifting upstarts like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell over establishment favorites in primaries, and fueling the antipathy to government spending that has become the party’s defining characteristic. Ryan’s budget translated this principle into policy, setting out to slash spending and privatize popular entitlement programs like Medicare. Not long ago, such measures would have terrified most politicians. But Republicans seeking to keep faith with the Tea Party — as most were — understood that they had better cast their lot with Ryan.

Most Republicans in Congress come from safely gerrymandered districts and risk little by supporting Ryan’s budget. (The greater risk for many would be not supporting it.) But that isn’t the case for the presidential hopefuls, whose appeal must extend beyond the conservative base if they are to have any hope of defeating President Obama. To them, Paul Ryan poses a problem.

Ordinarily, when the presidential primaries heat up, national candidates assume the role of party leaders and set the agenda. But since none commands much support, none has anything approaching Ryan’s influence. This has created an unusual situation in which the presidential aspirants are essentially bystanders and Republican politics are being driven by governors and congressmen. As one adviser to a presidential candidate put it to National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein in March, ”This is the tail wagging the dog.” Brownstein suggested that some of the extreme positions being imposed on the GOP presidential field — intense opposition to collective-bargaining rights for public-sector unions; support for hardline anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s — could harm the party’s nominee in the general election since President Obama and the Democrats will likely exploit them.

People are now using words like “implode” and “self-destruct” to describe Gingrich’s campaign, but let me ask a question: what did Gingrich say that was really wrong? Medicare is a popular program that benefits a lot of people-its a great leap forward from what the situation was before it came into being. Conservatives, as Gingrich points out, detest social engineering-yet Mr. Ryan through the combination of draconian cuts and his voucher program for Medicare ( an early Christmas present for America’s giant insurance companies) are seeking to turn back the clock to 1926 if not earlier. Of course it needs fixes-but as I have pointed out repeatedly over the last three years-the money is out there, provided we have the will. I’d rather take care of Grandma than Shell Oil.

For me-the fact that one has to accept Paul Ryan’s positions without question, without even taking the time to attack him for the underlying thinking behind them-is just another low water mark for a party that once supported most of the ideas that were in both health care reform and deficit reduction. Fifteen years ago most prominent Republicans supported mandates, they recognized that supply side economics didn’t work-and that the party of Reagan had room for many diverse views.  That party is dead and has been for several years-the Tea Party purge has killed it. Gingrich is just the latest victim of their stupidity.

The face of conservatism used to be a happy face, a confident face, an optimistic face. I suppose its easy to be happy if you are winning elections but there was more to it than that, more to it than even the fact that the naturally sunny disposition of Ronald Reagan was at the head of the movement. That optimism and happiness was born in the give and take of debate when Big Ideas – consequential, important ideas – were the stuff of bull sessions, conferences, panel discussions, and papers published at the various think tanks. All factions of conservatism had their say. There was passionate disagreements over everything. But somehow, we never lost sight of the goal – building a conservative movement where ideas translated into government action.

Somewhere along the way, we gave into the temptation to use conservative ideas to divide rather than unite. This tactical decision brought electoral success but at a price. It gave social conservatives and their splenetic base a platform to dominate the movement and the Republican party. The price for that mistake is still being paid.