December 20, 2011
Steyn on Gingrich: Hoo boy!
Columnist Mark Steyn is rather gobsmacked that Newt Gingrich has somehow ended up as the nearly-last man standing in the Republican primary season, after a series of potential presidential flavors-of-the-day have turned rancid on GOP voter's palates:
And when all the other Un-Romney of the Week candidates were gone, there was Newt, the last man standing, smirking, waddling to the debate podium.
Unlike the niche candidates, he offers all the faults of his predecessors rolled into one: Like Michele Bachmann, his staffers quit; like Herman Cain, he spent the latter decades of the last century making anonymous women uncomfortable, mainly through being married to them; like Mitt Romney, he was a flip-flopper, being in favor of government mandates on health care before he was against them, and in favor of big-government climate-change “solutions” before he was against them, and in favor of putting giant mirrors in space to light American highways by night before he was agai . . . oh, wait, that one he may still be in favor of. So, if you live in the I-95 corridor, you might want to buy blackout curtains.
And yet, and yet ... Gingrich still manages to stay in the race, conservatives uncomfortable with Mitt Romney's stiff, inauthentic self pushed to reconsider Gingrich -- especially given a collective sense that Romney is not the man to go for the knockout punch in what is sure to be a savage campaign season.
But then Steyn reminds of Gingrich's glass jaw.
What exactly is so conservative about the Newt Gestalt?
When Romney dared him to return his Freddie Mac windfall, Gingrich responded by demanding that Mitt “give back all of the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain.”
That’s a cute line if you’re a 32-year-old Transgender and Colonialism major trying to warm up the drum circle at Occupy Wall Street, but it’s very odd coming from the supposedly more-conservative candidate on the final stretch of a Republican primary.
When Romney attacked Perry’s views on Social Security by accusing him of wanting to shove Granny off a cliff, he was recycling the most shopworn Democratic talking point.
Newt effortlessly trumps that by recycling the laziest anti-globalist anarchist talking point. At Freddie Mac, Newt was peddling influence to a quasi-governmental entity. At Bain Capital, Mitt Romney was risking private equity in private business enterprise. What sort of “conservative” would conflate the two?
Steyn notes that Gingrich is anything but a conservative when it comes to a host of issues, and notwithstanding his ability to enrage Democrats, Gingrich is not opposed to Big Government, at least when the Big Ideas being implemented appeal to his Newtness.
It was Newt who gave us S-CHIP, the biggest expansion of Medicaid since the program was created. On the other hand, when it came to holding the line on “tax credits” for people who don’t pay any taxes, Gingrich looked into Clinton’s eyes and melted.
[...]
Instead of enabling Americans to take risks and push the frontiers, [Gingrich's proposals] incline mostly to the expansion of bureaucracy and an increase in dependency. As a result of Gingrich’s “reforms,” four out of ten American children are on Medicaid.
[...]
Few politicians are more incisive at identifying the absurdities of America’s bloated, sclerotic leviathan ... but no other candidate on the right shares the boundless confidence that Leviathan will work just swell if only Knut the Great is there to command it. For Republicans, this is not someone who is both “very conservative” and “very moderate,” but someone who is potentially the worst of all worlds: a man who embraces big-government solutions to health care, climate change, and all the rest, but who gets damned as a mean-spirited vindictive right-wing hater.
Steyn reminds us that Romney has faults aplenty, too: "Romney is proposing to end [capital gains taxes] only for those making under $200,000 because it would be wrong to 'spend our precious tax dollars for a tax cut.' When 'conservatives' think tax cuts are government 'spending,' who needs Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank?"
Sigh.
I'd missed that Romney quote the first time around.
Sigh.
It's things like that that make me reconsider Newt.
And articles like this that make me think the GOP truly deserves its not-so-fond nickname: The Stupid Party.
Really? This is going to be our choice next year? Obama against Mitt or Newt?
It seems we're going to be offered a bite of a crap sandwich, and once again conservatives will be asked to pick the one that's marginally less stomach-turning.
Great.
I am neither amused nor enthused.
Posted by Mike Lief at December 20, 2011 06:59 AM
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