Newt’s New Ideas
I think I’ve made this point before, but for added conservocredibility take note of Ross Douthat’s post on the scant grounds for thinking that Newt Gingrich has any “new ideas” to offer:
If you find Newt’s manifesto – which urged Republicans to “overhaul the census and cut its budget radically,” to “implement a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system,” and to double down on porkbusting, among other ideas – to be a plausible blueprint for a Republican revival, then he’s your man.
At his best, Gingrich is good at dressing up an interest-group agenda (let us drill more places) as something somewhat more ennobling. Which is, in the right circumstances, a useful skill for a politician to have. But it’s not where actual new ideas come from.
42 Responses to “Newt’s New Ideas”
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November 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Newt Gingrich is an egotistical two-faced scumbag. This is not the person that anyone should listen to, least of all Republicans. From his flip-flops on national security/war in Iraq to his presiding over the genesis of big government Republicanism…he believes in nothing.
We’re talking about a human being that divorced his wife while she was receiving cancer treatments (after he had been cheating on her). What kind of person is he to be lecturing anyone on morality or conservatism for that matter.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I thought you’d offer up the idea that we just buy the banks and AIG, rather than just stumbling around drunk…
November 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Gingrich spent a good four months, maybe more, telling Republicans to run on offshore drilling with the motto “drill here, drill now, pay less.” It’s almost like he didn’t pay attention to energy use patterns in the rest of the world and didn’t know that the offshore drilling ban was going to expire in September, taking the issue off the table in the closing weeks. But the GOP spent the summer parroting Gingrich as if he wasn’t a total moron.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
That’s because Gingrich and many of these Republicans are frauds. They don’t know the first thing about markets or finance.
My favorite is listening to Gingrich compare the war in Iraq to the civil war. Yeah, those two things are exactly alike. And how GWB is really like Abe Lincoln trying to hold the country together.
As to his brilliant ideas, I’ve seen drunken friends in bars come up with better suggestions.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Newtie, newtie, newtie…
Guess he didn’t see the fact that it was REPUBLICANS who just doubled our National Debt to almost $10 trillion. Guess he figures they will be able to blame evil Democrats for that next election.
Myself, I do hope he becomes a driving force because after all his affairs, divorces & self gratification he’ll be a bloated pinata I’d really like a crack at.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
If you want to listen to the guy who said he was shutting down the government because Clinton made him sit in the back of the plane, then he’s your man. If you want to listen to the guy who thought it was a good idea to impeach the President over a blow job, then he’s your man. If you want to listen to a guy who thought it was a good idea to impeach the President over a blowjob at the same time he was cheating on his third wife, then he’s your man.
He clearly has awesome powers of judgment.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I don’t know, I find that Douthat’s conservocredibility rating has decreased somewhat with his early cheerleading of Palin as a potential leader of a new conservativism. Now, Douthat’s vision for the Grand New Party might include politicians who are incredibility uniformed, incoherent, and dimwitted, but it seems to be a strange direction for young intelligent conservatives to take to embrace this kind of behavoir. He also had an absurd post the other day http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/sarah_palin_and_the_msm.php in which he seems to pin Palin’s problems on the liberal biased MSM and inept McCain handlers. Pretty odd because for a while he was seriously reppin his conservocred. Not sure what happened.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
And yet given all that, he’s still a rock star in the Republican party.
With people like Newt, who needs enemies.
I hope we run him in 2012…Just to watch him get slaughtered.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
The GPS based (digital) air traffic management system of the future has been chugging away in development for a while. Given resources, it will probably be a part of an Obama administration, though it’s a small sliver of things. http://www.jpdo.gov for more. There’s actually a stakeholder town hall meeting in the DC area in mid December if you’re really interested and in the area….
November 13th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
young intelligent conservatives
jumbo shrimp
November 13th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I find that Douthat’s conservocredibility rating has decreased somewhat with his early cheerleading of Palin as a potential leader of a new conservativism.
Douthat’s championship of Palin proves he is One Of Them in at least some respects. His credibility with conservatives, or as a spokesman for conservatism, can only be enhanced by his Palin support. His credibility in the reality-based world is no doubt diminished, but that’s a pretty unavoidable trade-off.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Also not sure how Gingrich is supposed to save money on the census, since he is (iirc; definitely the GOP is against) opposed to basing the census, even in part, on statistical inferences based on samples and models. No doubt he would simply save by not counting everyone, and basing funding and apportionment on the incomplete and erroneous counts.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Republicans have devolved to the “If I Only Had A Brain” stage. Think of the barnyard chicken with its head cut off, but still hopping around. It’s legally dead, but you feel uncomfortable about pulling off the feathers and putting it in the oven.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I agree kth, the problem is that there are so many fools at the top that believe in the so-called 11th commandment, folks like Douthat are almost forced (whether he believes it or not) to say/support ridiculous things.
One hopes that the civil war will cleanse some of this, or at least make it possible for a new, more principled, generation to have some authority…we’ll see.
And rea, there are some young conservatives out there in the foreign policy realm that are far more realistic than the bunch making decisions. If your guys want to stay in power, I would advise you to dump the rhetoric and co-opt them. You split them off from the party and you’ll have the cover that you need on national security…especially when it comes to a crisis.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
In Ross’ defense, my understanding was he had championed Palin back when nobody had heard of her. He assumed, like I figure even most Dems did when she was announced, that she met some minimum bar of competence. He, unlike plenty of Republican hacks, readily admitted she didn’t meet that bar after the Gibson interviews.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
“He assumed, like I figure even most Dems did when she (Palin) was announced, that she met some minimum bar of competence.”
When Palin was announced, my 70 year old mother, who never heard of this person before, was able to use The Google and within a day compiled a pretty detailed list of Palin’s various (mis)adventures as mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska. It was pretty easy to determine Palin was not competent to be anywhere near the office of VP.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Not only is that nine-point agenda mostly pretty minor stuff (Census, air traffic control, gas tax moratorium, strategic petroleum reserve, earmarks, English language), but some of it’s now dated minor stuff.
For instance, we should be filling up the SPR to capacity while oil is cheap (which might even raise the world price a bit), then sell some of it when the price is high next spring and summer, as a countercyclical measure that might stabilize world prices just a tad.
And the Census? As a veteran of the 2000 Census, I can tell you that it’s too late to implement more than modest changes to the 2010 Census and still expect it to work. That window’s closed, unless you want to rip out a wall.
But the big problem is that, by and large, Newt’s agenda is a wish list that doesn’t even pretend to be in search of a problem. We’ve got some pretty big problems right now, but only #3 on his list even makes a head-fake at addressing any of them.
It’s as if he’s trying to do the Contract With America again, only with the trivia level ratcheted up a few notches. Pathetic, really.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Gingrich is a genuinely peculiar sort of conservative. For one thing in a very twisted way he seems genuinely compassionate. (I did say in a *twisted* way, m’kay?) And a lot of his analysis of situations (the atrocious behavior of colonial administration in the Belgian Congo when the king’s indifference meant administrators had no accountability) are perfectly sensible… right up till he starts drawing conclusions that seem almost exactly the opposite of what his analysis ought to lead to (get rid of government instead of insure more accountability.)
Anyway, in keeping with the folk-religion both he and I were exposed to growing up it’s like he made a deal with the Devil based on a sincere desire to make the world a better place. Except that, in folklore, the Devil’s deals are always zero sum. Consequently for every good proposal he comes up with he’s destined to come up with one that’s utterly evil and, devilishly, another that’s completely Froot-Loops (overhaul the census?) With the additional twist that he’s unable to tell which category any given idea falls in.
Sort of like the Greek myth of the king who’s prophecy said “You’ll destroy a mighty civilization” who’s actions brought about the downfall of his own kingdom.
Even if it were possible it wouldn’t make him a sympathetic character. That he really does manage to put the “epic” in epic fail makes him especially interesting to watch though.
figleaf
November 13th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
A space-based air traffic control system? Why? Because radar has always worked so well?
November 13th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
wiley, the principal reason for the move away from a radar based system is that the old system can’t really handle much additional growth in congested airspace or around busy airports. This is a function not only of radar as a surveillance technology, but also of the limitations of the current analog voice communications techniques and the existing air traffic controller interactions with aircraft (passing them from sector to sector, etc). So if the system is going to grow while maintaining safety at desired levels, the infrastructure (and that’s what this is, no less than a bridge, although digital rather than steel) is going to have to be changed significantly. A nice description is at http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4219569.html
(by the way, there’s still a debate about the role of radar as a backup system)
November 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
We used to have a term. “Crackpot.” It conveyed a complete image. It’s not much in usage anymore, when its needed most. Newt Gingrich has a pedestrian mind, trained at a pedestrian university, embossed with a pedestrian Ph.D. “His” ideas have never been his, thus never new, and are creative only in the masking. He’s an amoral, narcissistic, opportunistic, hypocritical mediocrity. He’s also a crackpot.
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