In other Newt Gingrich news, the newly minted presidential hopeful isn't too thrilled with Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare reform:“I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change,” Mr. Gingrich said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”
“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”
With this, Gingrich joins a growing number of Republicans who supported RyanCare when it was the agenda item du jour but are now running away in light of its stunning unpopularity with the actual electorate.
That said, there's something odd about this political moment; at the same time that Republicans are rushing to disavow their association with Ryan's Medicare program, the national GOP is touting Ryan as a possible candidate for one of Wisconsin's Senate seats, now that Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl has announced his retirement. Absent some secret information about the trajectory of public opinion in Wisconsin, this seems unwise; not only would Ryan have to contend with a Democratic electorate mobilized by the presidential election, he'd have to deal with a moderate electorate energized by Scott Walker's assault on public workers, and his own baggage as architect of the plan to dismantle Medicare (in a state where seniors hold an above average share of the population).
And what would he get out of the deal? Six years as a junior member in the Senate, where he'd have dramatically less power and influence compared to his current position as Budget Committee chairman. Indeed, given his stature within the Republican Party, a Senate race seems like a bad career move, even if he has national ambitions.
