Or, to put it another way, today's neo-conservative idea of fundamental change means a return only to the spending trend line assumed by Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, established in the 1970s.
As if such a reaction against the nearly vertical spending trend, first of George W. Bush in the 2000s and then the even worse one of Barack Obama after him, would represent an achievement.
(See the discussion illustrating the differences, here.)
I refer, of course, to Peter Wehner's post at Commentary, here:
The single most important [!] idea, when it comes to fundamentally changing Washington, is the budget plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan last April. When most massive-scale-of-change [!] conservatives were defending Ryan’s plan against scorching criticisms from the left, Gingrich described the plan as an example of “right-wing social engineering.” It was Gingrich, not the rest of us, who was counseling caution, timidity, and an unwillingness to shape (rather than follow) public opinion. (The Medicare reform plan Gingrich eventually put out wasn’t nearly as bold and far-reaching as the one put out by Governor Romney.)
So much for Mr. Fundamental Change.
This is the problem with a conservatism which has no imagination, although its implicit repudiation of the dramatic spending under George W. Bush is rather refreshing considering where it comes from.
Be that as it may, after a leftist Obama lurches the country dramatically toward oblivion, any pull-back from that instantly becomes fundamental change, when all it is, once achieved, is really just a pale reflection of what real conservatism might actually have looked like.
Newt's formulation has been interpreted with the emphasis all on the "right-wing" idea of the formulation, when it's the "social" which I think was his real target.
Speaker Gingrich was mocking today's right wing for its lack of imagination, as if codifying social welfare spending at a somewhat reduced level represented an achievement. When his taunt was misunderstood and quickly became toxic to him, he realized he had no political recourse but to recant and change the subject. The truth had become the enemy of the political, which is why professors have so little impact. Believe me, it frustrates the hell out of them.
Regrettably, most of us on first blush assumed Speaker Gingrich meant his criticism from the left, and, horror of horrors, that he now supposedly lived there. No one wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe his was a criticism from the right.
I know I didn't.
On further reflection I suggest Speaker Gingrich meant to criticize Ryan's plan because it represented a conservative codification of big government (albeit on a smaller scale than Obama was implementing at the time). He meant thereby to criticize it as an (unacceptable) truce with the post-war consensus for Social Security, Medicare and their iterative expansions under Republican and Democrat administrations.
Consider that the trend line of spending of the status quo ante Obama was itself a radical departure from the post-war period, and even from that established in the 1960s. The new and truly radical trend began after the recession of 1974. Real conservatism, if it could exist at all, would seek to recapture the post-war trend lines of spending before 1974, but Paul Ryan's plan is nothing more than a return to that untenable trend.
A Newt Gingrich presidency might make such episodes of misunderstanding a more frequent occurrence, but from the look of things Americans appear instead to be hoping for the bell to ring so they can get to the next class, which will be, thankfully, lunch, study hall, or possibly human health and hygiene.
I, for one, hope Newt sticks around to keep entertaining the thinkers in the class.
But we're most probably going to end up with a very boring president instead of him, not unlike the one we have now.
Probably the same one.
