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A Post That Is Mostly Not About Gingrich

1.  Here is Gingrich's Iowa ad.  The visuals reference Reagan's 1984 Morning In America ad, but the words of Gingrich's ad are nostalgic.  The words revive and restore are prominent.  The Reagan ad was for winners.  The Gingrich ad is for a dispossessed people.  "Some people say the America we know and love is a thing of the past."  Gingrich says in the ad. 

2.  Reihan Salam notes that, in 1983, the Reagan administration introduced as system of bureaucratically-directed pricing and open-ended budgeting for Medicare that increased use of higher cost procedures and increased medical costs throughout the system, and that this might be part of the reason why US health care costs outpaced those of most other wealthy countries in the 1980s.

3.  Gingrich's Medicare reform plan is a joke that will do nothing to bring down Medicare spending and Gingrich is demagoguing the Romney Medicare reform plan (just like he did the Ryan Medicare reform plan earlier in the year) by saying that it would apply to current recipients.  The man is a charlatan (though possibly not the only one.)

4. Is Gingrich's combination of implied Reagan nostalgia and a Medicare plan that will do nothing to curb the explosive growth of Medicare (even as we head into bankruptcy) what older, right-identifying Americans want? 

5.  I think the answer is more no than yes, but I think Gingrich believes the reverse.      
Categories > Politics

Discussions - 4 Comments

The key questions are not who is the most conservative candidate, but who will do best for the country. The first question is who is most likely to win. If both Romney and Gingrich are, then we can turn to the next question. But that question is not who has better policy proposals. The question is who is more likely to help enact a good agenda. Would Gingrich or Romney block the Ryan plan? Who would be better at regulatory reform? Etc. After all, the President is not the be-all, end-all of our system. Would either of them, as a candidat, lead to the election of the Democratic House and Senate?

Newt had a double-digit drop in the polls in Iowa according to Rasmussen's latest. ROMNEY of all people is winning in Iowa with 23% followed by Ron Paul with 18% (4-pt margin of error). Guess you can't attack Paul Ryan AND venture capitalism and get the GOP nomination.

Richard, even if we get a Republican president, it isn't sure that a Ryan'style reform (even a more moderate version - which I would prefer), would be able to pass a divided Senate without srong presidential support in the face of all the opposition that is sure to come from Democratic-aligned interest groups. I have little confidence is Romney, but Gingrich demagogued the Ryan Medicare reform shamefully.

I think Gingrich would be a pretty lousy general election candidate. I also fear he would be a pretty lousy president.

That is not an implied endorsement of anyone else among the current Republican candidates, though if I had to vote tomorrow it would be for Santorum and hang his poll standing.

As one political scientist recently put it, Iowa is just a bump in the road. It isn't really predictive of who will win the nomination (nor is New Hampshire, particularly for Republican candidates). The South and Midwest are the places to watch.

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