Gene Healy isn’t a fan of Newt Gingrich as the GOP nominee:
Has it really come to this? Newt Gingrich as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney? That’s what many in the punditocracy have proclaimed as the former speaker of the House has surged recently in the polls.
Yet a look at his record reveals that Newt is hardly the “anti-Mitt” — he’s Mitt Romney with more baggage and bolder hand gestures.
Every Gingrich profile proclaims that he’s a dazzling “ideas man,” a “one-man think tank.” It seems that, if you clamor long enough about “big ideas,” people become convinced you actually have them.
But most of Gingrich’s policy ideas over the last decade have been tepidly conventional and consistent with the Big Government, Beltway Consensus.
Gingrich’s campaign nearly imploded this summer when he dismissed Rep. Paul Ryan’s, R-Wis., Medicare reform plan as “right-wing social engineering.” But that gaffe was a window into Gingrich’s irresponsible approach toward entitlements.
In 2003, Gingrich stumped hard for President George W. Bush’s prescription drug bill, which has added about $17 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. “Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill,” Newt urged.
And in his 2008 book Real Change, he endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance.
In the same way that we now know that “Santorum” is also the name of an obscure US politician, we are reminded that, back in the 1990s, “Gingrich” wasn’t just the word for the dog turd you had to scrape off the bottom of your shoe.
