Since his campaign is built on coded dog whistles, Newt’s targeting a older, white electorate that knows the code and hears the whistle. So it’s no surprise that he ditched the Ryan plan almost immediately. And since he’s Newt, he has to make the Ryan plan sound like something Stalin cooked up:
Newt Gingrich slammed the House GOP budget on Meet The Press this morning, telling interviewer David Gregory that replacing Medicare with a voucher system was too “radical” an approach. His words were by far the harshest of any major presidential candidate towards Paul Ryan’s proposal on entitlements.
“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” Gingrich said, calling the plan “too big a jump” for the country. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”
Now that a Sunday show favorite has dropped a turd on Ryan’s plan, expect the beltway media to pile on with a bunch of “even Newt Gingrich … ” questions. Newt’s reprising the role he played in the 90’s, when he was often one of the Democrats’ biggest assets.
stuckinred
Mornin Joe is livid about this!
Comrade Javamanphil
I think not. Ryan is the Heathers new crush now. Poor Newtie is going to find he just doesn’t inspire the same stirring he once did.
Valdivia
and just in time for RyanCare 2.0! The re-release. Sweet.
dmsilev
Posted this in the previous thread, but it makes a bit more sense here.
Behold Ryan’s op-ed on the need for a serious budget debate:
Anyone want to go through the thing and count the lies, distortions, omitted facts, etc.? I’d do it, but I need a second cup of coffee before being able to use exponential notation.
PeakVT
OT/Nerd Alert: Space Shuttle launch video streams.
MattMinus
I think people are really going to respond to the notion that Obama is the “food stamp president”.
alwhite
The only bright note is this shit stew we have cooked up is that the wingnuts are finally getting around to cannibalism. Once they start eating their own the beltway bastards are going to have to pick sides and there will be questions like “even Newt says”. At some point they will cross swords with others of their slimy ilk and the editorial page may be worth reading once again.
The last hope will be that the Depends crowd will finally realize that the masters of the universe are not their friends and we can begin to reconstruct America on a sane foundation.
Ash Can
So Paulie Ryan is kicking off the Medicare-privatization-resuscitation effort today here in Chicago, with a speech to a downtown business club — on the day that Rahm Emanuel is to be sworn in as mayor. I hope the Beltway is listening to Paulie, at least, because he’s sure as hell going to get buried in the news cycle here.
Valdivia
@Ash Can:
ha ha ha ha. wipes tear of laughter.
Rahm!
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: It is almost like the right has used up all the political instincts and timing for which they were once famous. On a related note, I not sure that Paul Ryan is very bright.
dmsilev
@Ash Can: You and I both know that Rahm scheduled his inauguration for today *just to drown out Ryan’s speech*. Yes, I know that the inauguration date was set long before Ryan’s speech was scheduled. That just shows that Rahm is using some of Obama’s Time-Lord abilities.
Chris
Didn’t Gingrich try to strangle and de facto end Medicare back in 1995 by denying it the money it needed to operate? Wasn’t that what the government shutdown was about?
How quickly he changes his tune… or maybe that experience just left a bad taste in his mouth.
Alex S.
Hehe, nice…
Also, all engineers are communists. They make things. Real capitalists only shift money.
M-Pop
@PeakVT: Thank you for the link – I’m watching right now!
Brian S
THing I took away from that is Gingrich’s attempt to make himself the moderate when he’s been a bomb-thrower his whole career. What’s that about?
cat48
Newtser agrees with the president, who also called the plan “radical.” Maybe Newt is going to try win those “disillusioned” Obama voters I keep hearing about. He might need to drop the dog whistles though….
jonas
@Brian S: I don’t think he’s trying to be moderate, I think he’s betting that he can get a lot of cranky old people to come out to vote for him in the primary with a combination of racist dog-whistling, hippie bashing and promising not to take their Rascal scooters away.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not sure any of those guys are very bright. I can understand how Ryan’s speech could be meant primarily for Beltway media consumption, but if that’s the case why bother leaving town to do it, especially if you’re going to come to Chicago to do it?
cat48
@Ash Can:
The Villagers loves them some Rahhhhm though. What will Brooks do as he has a crush on Ryan & Rahm?
Ash Can
@dmsilev: That’s the very definition of FUD. It galls me to no end that these assholes are given free rein to spout this shit without any real pushback. In a just world, this turd would be printed side-by-side with another piece fact-checking it. Now that would be fair and balanced.
PeakVT
Whew.
jrg
I’m convinced the Ryan plan is a big reason for the recent Tea Party polling collapse. Older Republican voters like to talk about “small government”, and “saving money”, but they are not willing to bear the burden of that.
This was bound to happen the moment Republicans were forced to acknowledge the fact that NPR, Planned Parenthood, and food stamps do not make up 90% of the federal budget.
artem1s
Philanthropy News Digest has an interesting article on donors to politically active non profits.
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=339700037
you can mess with the Supremes but don’t piss of the IRS
Cacti
Newtie’s already breaking Reagan’s 11th commandment.
Brian S
@PeakVT: Thanks. I managed to get past the commercial just in time to see liftoff. Loved the datastream at the bottom of the video as well.
Brian S
@jonas: He’s trying to have it both ways, in other words. He can get the old people to vote for him in the primaries, and then if he makes it to the general, he can pretend like he was a moderate all along and point to moments like this one as proof.
Ash Can
@cat48: I’m sure he’ll come up with some long-winded mountain of manure about how the two of them are actually very much alike, and destined to save the entire nation from oblivion through their sheer manly virtue. Or maybe he’ll just blow it off and write about how our civilization is going to hell because he couldn’t find a parking place this morning.
Cacti
@cat48:
Not likely.
Newt’s an anti-choice, anti-gay zealot. He’s trying to shore up support with the “get your government hands off my Medicare” crowd.
MattF
Figuring out what Newt is up to is easy– just bear in mind that his one true, life-long love-object is a certain person with the initials ‘NG’.
Wrt Medicare, he’s noticed that the Dems’ anti-Ryan strategy is working, so he wants some of that goodness to be good for Newt as well. But I guarantee that it will soon be combined with screwing municipal employees.
tell your mom I said thanks
Newt’s harshing on Ryan’s plan because he understands, correctly, that playing to racists gets you far more Republican votes than Ayn Rand ever could. He’s simply going populist. Ryan’s plan is entirely a genuflection to the corporate elite; via those lovely town hall meetings, it turns out even many Republicans can see through Ryan’s bullshit plan.
Sly
@Chris:
Yes.
And then he had the balls to say that they were increasing Medicare spending, without telling anyone that the alleged increase was not adjusted for inflation (and, as a result, was a cut in spending). No man who lies that often can be trusted to answer any question honestly. Yes, even fundamental ones like “who do I want as my wife?”
Plus he was instrumental in morphing Frank Luntz from a nobody who worked for Ross Perot’s campaign into a mainstream political operative, possibly the worst crime committed against the republic in the past twenty years. Where there’s pond scum, there’s probably more pond scum.
Villago Delenda Est
Newt’s trying to steal the “reasonable alternative” ground from guys like Daniels, Romney, and Pawlenty. Establish his “serious” bona fides with the vermin of the Village. The Village ignores the dog whistles, because they can’t hear them in the “three monkeys” sense of they can’t hear.
Also…and this is part of the plan…it provides the conflict the vermin of the Village crave. They love bomb throwing…it provides excitement and a story that their lazy asses have no problem in following.
gene108
@jonas:
Rascal Scooter suck!!!!!!!
Hover Rounds Rule!!!!!!!!
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Outstanding reference, very apropos.
JGabriel
Newt Gingrich:
Newt Gingrich is positioning himself as the moderate?
[Pause.]
Bwahahaha!
Damn, that’s richer than Goldman Sachs exec.
.
WereBear
@Comrade Javamanphil: You mean the Villagers have traded in an older model for a younger one?
Gee. You’d think Newt would have seen that coming.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Oooh, snap!
jeffreyw
@WereBear:
We have a thread winner.
Cacti
Per TPMDC:
Newt’s already walking back his repudiation of Ryancare.
Brian R.
Newt’s already walking back the attack on the Ryan plan.
I like how his aide makes it sound like the media distorted his words. Yeah, because there are so many good ways to read “radical change from the right” and “right-wing social engineering,” right?
Chris
@Sly:
Okay. I wasn’t old enough to pay attention at the time, but I do recall reading that Medicare was the heart of the 1995 shutdown. Thanks for the clarification.
OT and another nineties question – was there any difference at all between Ross Perot’s positions and those of the Republican Party proper? Most third parties split away because they have ideological differences with one of the Big Two, but from what I know of Perot, he seems like a perfectly generic post-Reagan Republican (and what you’re saying about Gingrich bringing on Perot people seems to confirm that).
Was he just a megalomaniac who ran because he could and wanted the attention?
aimai
@WereBear:
Oh yes, Snap Snap Snap Snappity Snap.
aimai
cmorenc
@Sly:
Luntz is a genuinely talented evil genius precisely because he doesn’t drink any of the GOP’s delusional kool-aid, including that which he himself helps brew with recipes tailored to results of his public opinion research. He’s first a genuinely curious, meticulously objective student of what makes people’s minds tick, both individually and from demographic group influences. Although sometimes when he appears on TV with focus groups (particularly on FOX), he’s acting as a shill with groups designed to help push a certain message, there are other times when he appears on TV with focus groups to genuinely, objectively plumb the underlying opinion dynamics. When he’s doing the latter, he’s amply worth watching and listening to, because his analysis of the political lay of the land of his group is nearly always spot-on accurate, more so than anyone else. That’s one of the two fundamental keys to his devastating effectiveness; of course the other is his talent for using that objective understanding to devise deviously misleading messages to steer selected demographics in the desired direction, particularly as it will affect their voting behavior.
You can loathe him for what he does with his talents, but it’s a huge mistake to disrespect how effectively he uses them, or to dismiss him out of hand any time he appears on tv. He’s enough of the bona fide scholar of public opinion that you’ll often learn something of genuine important value about the momentary state of the electorate.
Bulworth
Oh I don’t know. Seems as if Mitchy Daniels is the flavor of the day. He’s Very Serious about Deficits!
MattF
OT: This is why we have the intertubes.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc:
Not to be overly critical, but this is pretty much along the lines of “Hitler was a pretty good public speaker”.
It’s absolutely objectively true. The problem of course is that Luntz operates in the service of evil, as you indicated up front.
geg6
@Cacti:
@Brian R.:
Heh, you guys beat me to it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bulworth:
Given that he had a central role in creating the ones we’ve got now, I’d say that’s the catbird’s seat!
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
Hmmm. IF The Newticle keeps slamming Ryan’s insane Medicare killing plan that might just get him the nomination. If exactly one candidate gets up and says ‘I’m the guy who won’t kill Medicare’ the GOP’s main primary voting block may flock to him.
Two obstacles: The walkback, which may or may not be relevant because it’s so much less high profile, and Newt’s massive personal charm. He’s climbin’ a mountain here.
ChrisS
@Chris:
Perot was the beginning of the Ron Paul wing. Perot was most vehemently against globalization and free trade without environmental* and labor restrictions (not that he was a big fan of regulation) . He was against government spending increases and the welfare state, and he was critical of defense spending despite his billions of dollars of wealth being the result of massive government contracts for data management.
He wanted to use means testing for medicare and social security and increases taxes on the wealthy to pay down the budget deficit. Basically approaching it from both sides. He was concerned with keeping jobs in America and the budget deficit. I don’t know … sometimes, I think America would not have been a bad place had he been elected, but then again, he was kind of nuts.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@cmorenc: So Luntz is essentially Count Rugen from the Princess Bride
“Beautiful isn’t it? It took me half a lifetime to invent it. I’m sure you’ve discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. Presently I’m writing the definitive work on the subject, so I want you to be totally honest with me on how the machine makes you feel. This being our first try, I’ll use the lowest setting. As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. Really that’s all this is except that instead of sucking water, I’m sucking life. I’ve just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don’t know what that would do to you. So, let’s just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?”
Brian R.
@Bulworth:
He sure is. His biggest claim to fame so far is that he was responsible for creating the biggest one in American history.
Supporting Daniels for president because you’re worried about the deficit is like hiring Charlie Manson as a babysitter because you want your kids to be protected from all the weirdos out there.
Bulworth
I’m sure Newty will come around to Ryan’s plan sooner or later. The math demands it!
Joey Maloney
@Omnes Omnibus: I not sure that Paul Ryan is very bright.
I’m sure. But he has a purty mouth.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@artem1s: I’d be concerned who they are going after. If they are going after standard non-profits, but aren’t going after the religious institutions that have been pouring money into political activities, this would become an IRS war on center or left-leaning non-profits.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
That, and whoever stands up and says “I’m the guy who won’t kill Medicare” is marking himself for immediate cutoff from the elites (economic, political, and probably media) that run the GOP. Can’t win without them, especially on his side of the aisle.
And he’d lose hard right voters, too, the kind who believe everything the ideologues say so hard that they actually think privatizing Medicare will make everything better. Americans do support Medicare by a very wide margin, too wide for Republicans to ignore… but all of the minority that opposes it is in the GOP voter base, and they can’t ignore that either. It’s a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t third rail for them.
geg6
@Chris:
Yes. Yes, he was.
The main thing he had going for him was that the Wingnut contingent was pissed as hell at HW Bush for (sensibly, IMHO) raising taxes and were looking for someone, anyone who would categorically state he/she would not for any reason. That person was Perot, and he had the added bonus of being the outsidery white knight that the assholes loved. I think he also got a lot of what would today be the Paulite vote, mainly because he vaguely talked about high tech voting. He got the racists and gay haters because he talked a lot about going back to the time when you didn’t have to lock the door to your house and would never, ever, ever, ever appoint a homosexual for anything whatsoever.
Cut spending, ignore the benefits of revenue enhancement, hate on “others” and gays…typical Republican. But remember that HW was NOT EVER a culture warrior and, actually, was pretty open-minded about abortion (though Perot was pro-choice) and gays and such. And he was a realist when it came to economic matters. Enough there to have the Great EDS Elf come to the rescue of the poor “”well dressed, middle aged”[51] individuals” who sent him their no-larger-than-$5 donations.
Read the Wiki on his campaign and tell me it was anything other than an ego trip:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_presidential_campaign,_1992
Chris
@ChrisS:
Thanks. I see.
Sort of the high-water mark of the Ron Paul wing, with his near-20% of the vote. It’s for damn sure Ron Paul isn’t getting that much.
cmorenc
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water:
BINGO! That’s exactly the Luntz analogy that leaped to my mind, though I refrained from mentioning it in my original post in the interest of making a serious point about Luntz’s talents rather than coming across as satirical.
Sometimes, however, life imitates art, doesn’t it?
Tom Q
@ChrisS: I don’t know about that. I think Perot as president would have been essentially Simpson/Bowles as president. Yeah, he had some Paul-ites (and Buchanan-ites), but reducing the deficit was alot of his appeal with the middle-of-the-road voters who voted for him on Election Day. (And this was his main deviation from the GOP in ’92, who had already staked out their “deficits don’t matter if they’re caused by tax cuts” position)
He wasn’t insane like the current crop of GOP, but he would have continued the march away from the New Deal that Clinton & Obama, however imperfectly, have begun to reverse.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
I would, but I used up all my Post-It flags marking all the lies and distortions in Taibbi’s latest attack on Goldman.
geg6
@ChrisS:
Actually, he talked a lot about the wealthy spending more than average people to help out the economy, not taxing them more. I don’t recall him ever saying that taxes should be raised on anyone at all. If he had, all the people I knew then who were Libertarians would most certainly NOT have been such big fans of his. And they were, every single of them. Loved them some Ross, just like they love them some Paul family values today.
p.a.
When was Sully’s link moved to the Monitor/Mock column? Did 1 recent post push it over the line? Or was it the long drawn-out history of cluelessness?
burnspbesq
@artem1s:
The only problem here is that some right-wing “public interest law firm” is going to try to sue the IRS, giving the courts another shot at further messing up the case law on standing.
ChrisS
@geg6:
were looking for someone, anyone who would categorically state he/she would not for any reason.
Perot was planning on raising income taxes on the wealthy, but cut the capital gains tax (but in a way to promote long term growth), raise gas taxes, in addition to eliminating fraud waste and abuse (shocked, I know), in order to close the budget deficit.
@Tom Q:
He wasn’t insane like the current crop of GOP
It really is amazing how far down the rabbit hole these people really have fallen in just shy of two decades, isn’t? Other than tax cuts, shit that the GOP did, or proposed, 20 years ago is socialist now.
Linda Featheringill
Newt’s make-a-quotable-statement-then-have-an-aid-walk-it-back might not be a mistake. It might be a strategy.
[or bug and feature thing you nerds are always saying? :-)]
ChrisS
@geg6:
I’m not saying he was going to be all redistributionist and shit, but he was looking at options.
Interestingly enough:
He even wanted to expand medicare for all Americans, enact strict gun control, was pro-choice, pro-ish environment, and wanted less taxes but more government oversight of industry (not sure how that was going to work out, but ….)
He had a serious authoritarian bent, but he was light years from the GOP of today.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: I am suddenly glad I don’t work TE/GE.
gene108
@Bulworth:
geg6
@ChrisS:
A tax increase on the very wealthy may have been in the budget stuff he released, but that’s not how he talked about it. He always talked about it as the rich needing to spend more. And the only reason I know so well how he talked about it was that the guy I lived with at the time actually voted for Perot and hung on his every word. He did not highlight the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy. His biggest message was always the “giant sucking sound” of jobs going to Mexico and the deficit, deficit, deficit, deficit. In fact, he probably started the whole deficit garbage we’re still stuck with today. And, again just like his Mini-Mes today, Perot had no fucking clue what he was talking about when it came to the budget.
Fred
Newt just loves that “radical” word.
gene108
@ChrisS:
Sounds a lot like President Clinton’s strategy, but I don’t think Perot “felt your pain”.
Cap and Trade pops to mind as a Republican, free market alternative to top down regulations, which is now socialist and evil.
20 years ago Republicans agreed Acid Rain in the Midwest was a problem.
Now Republicans refuse to agree environmental damage can be man made.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Yevgraf (fka Michael): Not mine but I am not enough aware of all internet traditions to remember the originator of said reference.
@WereBear: FTW!
IM
@cmorenc:
A twisted mentat, then.
Bulworth
Today, proposals like this will get you branded “soshulist” and “radical”.
Cuppa Cabana
What does one thing have to do with the other? Why is racist dog-whistling associated with shitting on Ryan’s plan?
burnspbesq
It could actually be worse.
For example, T. Boone Pickens could have decided to enter politics, rather than spending his time and money ($160 million to date, IIRC) on the Oklahoma State athletic program.
Mike
According to TPM, Newt’s already walking it back… not a surprise. He’s claiming that he never said such a thing. I called it yesterday. Newt is just diarrhea of the mouth and he can’t help gaffeing all the time. It’s been his MO for decades.
Anyways, nothing much will come of this. Newt and Ryan will kiss and make up, but it’s still nice to have a TV clip of the whole thing.
Jay in Oregon
@ChrisS:
I’d love to see someone do an analysis of the political shift in the GOP for people who haven’t been paying attention and think that the current crop of raving lunatics is the same as the those lovable scamps in the 80’s…
Brachiator
Wow. I spent a few days relaxing, away from all media, and didn’t realize that Ryan had gone from being a brave, bold thinker to a bomb throwing radical in just a few short weeks.
Newt is such a tool, a stoopid, stoopid tool. Old Newt paints himself to be a historian, and yet constantly ignores the obvious, that the US has at times worked best as a nation built on experimentation and radical change. Dumbass.
But at least we see his opening gambit, attempting to paint Obama as too radical to be president.
TooManyJens
@dmsilev:
Or maybe the Rahm who went into the time vortex is back.