Gingrich–GOP plan for Medicare “Right-wing social engineering”, backs Obama’s insurance mandate
This is the major reason why Newt Gingrich shouldn’t get anywhere near the GOP nomination:
White House hopeful Newt Gingrich called the House Republican plan for Medicare "right-wing social engineering," injecting a discordant GOP voice into the party’s efforts to reshape both entitlements and the broader budget debate.
In the same interview Sunday, on NBC’s "Meet the Press," Mr. Gingrich backed a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, complicating a Republican line of attack on President Barack Obama’s health law.
Yup, he’s a bomb-thrower with lefty leanings. About as succinct as I can make it. He’s one of those guys who believes in using government for “social engineering” even while denouncing something as social engineering.
Later Sunday, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he also acknowledged that many Republicans are uncomfortable with requiring insurance coverage but challenged them to offer an alternative solution. "Most Republican voters agree with the principle that people have some responsibility to pay for their costs," he said.
Here’s a thought – stay the hell out of my health care?
That’s the problem with politicians like Gingrich – despite all the rhetoric on the right about smaller less intrusive government, they keep coughing up candidates like Gingrich who always seem to find “solutions” in government. My alternate solution? Back off! Change the law to allow insurance to be sold over state lines, get it out of the hands of employers, drop all the coverage mandates by government and let the market begin to work and shape the insurance product instead of government.
That’s my alternate solution. And you’d think a so-called Republican would be out there pushing something like it – instead of jumping on the lefty bandwagon by calling a genuine effort to back government out of the medical care business “right-wing social engineering”.
Republicans – you have both Gingrich and Romney trying to make the unacceptable acceptable. Is that what you want in the White House?
Bah.
Go make another commercial with Pelosi, Newt.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Newt has been in DC way too long. Between the Newt/Nancy AGW lovefest and Newt’s employment by GSEs, he is damaged goods.
This line on healthcare just smacks of DC-itis, the search for a government solution for every problem under the Sun.
Newtie has a fork in his back, and hasn’t the wit to know it.
Bring on the bab-be-cube sauce. That porker is done.
D.O.A.
I can’t remember the last time a politician has so completely committed political suicide in his first weekend of his/her campaign.
Yep. I was struck by that, too. Kinda like this was just a left-handed effort…or something.
Maybe for Mrs. Newtie, more than anyone?
Regardless, he’s hung himself effectively.
The only possible logic to his position is that he is taking the most extreme Left positions in order to conflict moderate GOP members, who have always disliked him, into not voting at all.
Newt lost my support back in the 90′s when instead of admitting he couldn’t come through on his “Contract with America”, he kept on redefining it. He is a smart man, and knows his history, but he has no place in the policy side of the federal government.
The “Contract with America” was fulfilled, but of course lost on many folks was that it only promised to bring to a vote many topics that the Democrats wouldn’t even let see the light of day.
That said, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike Newt.
But that is not how it was sold. And to be honest, it is precisely the reason the tea party has grown. We are tired of entrenched politicians and bureaucrats parsing what they once “promised” into reasons why they shouldn’t he held accountable for failing to enact policies they gave every indication of supporting.
Actually, it had 8 items that came under House rules that were to be passed, but the remainder was only promised a vote.
Who sold it to you that way? It wasn’t the GOP.
I’ll bet you are remembering how the MSM put it at the time.
Conversely, as McQ stated, we loath politicians who claim fealty to smaller, less intrusive government all the while supporting policies which inherently make government larger and more intrusive.
“Change the law to allow insurance to be sold over state lines, get it out of the hands of employers, drop all the coverage mandates by government and let the market begin to work and shape the insurance product instead of government.”
In other words, define an alternative set of laws and institutions that incorporate appropriate incentives to produce a preferred outcome?
It’s health insurance reform, but don’t tell McQuain that. Also, he left out treating the sum of monetary equivalent compensation as taxable income–it should show up on the W-2, as should the the “employer’s” part of the Social Security. People should know what they are really paid, and what they are paying.
OK. so whos left in the running?
McQ – Republicans – you have both Gingrich and Romney trying to make the unacceptable acceptable. Is that what you want in the White House?
There are two groups of “Republicans”:
(1) The clowns who live in the DC-NYC-Boston corridor, including Newt, and;
(2) The rest of us.
Newt and Mitt have been in national politics so long that they really have no idea that what sells with the pols, the journalists, and the lobbyists that they see every day is anathema to most of the rest of us. Further, they don’t need to worry too much about pleasing “the rest of us” for two reasons. First, they know that “the rest of us” will vote for whoever runs against Captain Bullsh*t. Second, they desperately want to avoid being “Palinized” by MiniTru, and the best way to stay in their good graces is to sound as much like a democrat as possible. They know that MiniTru will basically select the GOP nominee (how else did we wind up with Yosemite Sam last time?), and THAT’S the audience they are playing too. Hence, Romney’s unapologetic support for RomneyCare and Newt’s sudden support for individual mandates. We don’t like those things, but MiniTru does, and that’s what’s important in the race for the nomination.
There is no doubt that both Romney and Gingrich have a touch of Hayek’s fatal conceit: the belief that wise men (and women) in government can engineer markets that are more efficient than those that would arise spontaneously if both producers and consumers were allowed to manage their time, assets and entrepreneurial energy themselves.
—Tom Nally, New Orleans