Greg Anrig reads Newt Gingrich's new tome, for Real Change. Turns out it's the same old failed Contract with America:
The central theme of Gingrich's book, just as it has been throughout his political career, is that "bureaucracy" predisposes government to fail, in contrast to an inherently more effective and efficient private sector ...
Gingrich never adequately wrestles with any of the multitude of examples in which the Bush administration, equally hostile to government bureaucracy and civil servants, outsourced work to private, supposedly more entrepreneurial contractors -- with disastrous results ...
Many of the other ideas for "change" that Gingrich puts forward also closely overlap with the Bush agenda: tax cuts for the rich, weakening regulations, Social Security privatization, health savings accounts, school vouchers, reforming a "bigoted, anti-religious" judiciary, viewing Iraq as "one campaign in a larger war against the irreconcilable wing of Islam," etc. So there's little reason to believe that his remedies would lead to anything other than a continuation of the world that fails.
Has the Republican Revolution gone retro? Read and comment here.
--The Editors
