Newt Gingrich. Photo by Gage Skidmore
Newt Of-Three-Wives Gingrich is
getting dismembered across the cable news and info bohn networks today. Forcing him to do the quick-step GOP walkback on recent comments about Paul Ryan's
radical budget:
Newt Gingrich's walk back tour reached its zenith Tuesday night, as Gingrich personally apologized to Paul Ryan for dismissing his Medicare plan as "right wing social engineering." In an added twist, Gingrich claims that the merest mention of his extensive condemnation of Ryan's budget from Sunday's Meet The Press by Democrats is now out of bounds as a result.
Newt's stuck defending a wildly unpopular idea, among most voters anyway, but that's inexplicably popular among conservatives. After the super rich got truckloads of free money in subsidies, tax cuts, and the bailouts, they want more. So Newt and company want to serve that desire by raiding trillions of dollars worth of our middle class collective savings and borrow trillions more, and then give the tax cuts and sweet subsidy checks to a handful of super weatlhy conservative billionaires and corporations, and they want to hand it over for absolutely nothing in return but vague promises of jobs someday trickling back down to we the vested millions like crumbs. Never mentioned is the fact that the present value of Social Security and Medicare to millions of fully vested or near vested Americans at or near middle age -- including millions of us comfortably below age 55 -- is similar to the cost of a modest home in most communities across the nation. Or that we have faithfully paid into these programs for years with every single paycheck ever earned, starting as teenagers working partime jobs for minimum wage.
Not very many people are going to choose to give that away for free, because it's a terrible deal. So, the same folks who bleat on endlessly about free trade and the sacred value of investment and ownership rights when it's their money, not only want millions of us to give our precious pension and medical insurance away to super rich people for nothing, they are doing everything possible to bring the power of The State to bear in stealing it from those of us unwilling to give it away. This isn't capitalism or free trade, it sure as hell isn't small government. You'd think a legit conservative free marketeer would be fondling their musket and tri-corner hat at the mere thought of it.
What's notable isn't that Newt is getting skewered for going along with one version of that shitty something-for-nothing deal. What's chilling is the ruthless message being sent to the Republican Party by the wealthy GOP funding base: if you are not 100% down with ripping off the medical insurance and pension of millions of middle class vested beneficiaries, no matter how dangerous it may be to your political well being, you will be taken behind the proverbial barn and shot.