John Lithgow Performs Dramatic Reading of Gingrich Press Release

I hear the guy who wrote this is a great guy. So hopefully this won't follow him around too much.

But, as damaging as Gingrich's original statements were, this is actually what's going to drive him out of the race: The ridicule. You can get pretty far in American politics being wrong (hi President Obama!), but you can't get anywhere being ridiculous.

So this is damaging to Gingrich.

But it's also generally helpful to us. The more Gingrich looks absurd, the less respectable his comments about the Ryan's plan will be. The Democrats will still use his comments of course, to damage all those Republican congressmen who took substantial political risk to support a course of wisdom and restraint, but there will be at least some mitigation available, as Republican talking-heads can just roll their eyes and say, "Yes, that comes from the Hero who Emerges Unscathed from the Hail of Elite Bullets."

It doesn't undo the damage. It just makes it a little bit less.

I sorta like Gingrich and I even feel a little bad. But this is necessary for the good of the party. The guy basically put his own ambitions above party and principle and tried a Democrat style pitch in the Republican primary, to differentiate his brand and advance himself. (And then he tried that whole immigration-boards thing.)

He's playing for real, genuine Republican voters --- a lot of our voters do not like the Ryan plan and would like very much to pretend along with the Democrats that the plan is already fixed -- and that's a constituency, certainly.

But Gingrich was already shoulder-to-shoulder with Pelosi on cap-and-trade; he now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with her on Medicare.

"It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”

Yes, that plan involves death panels for granny in ten years or less, or huge taxes on the young to support a bankrupt system, and all I can say is if the old plan on being unreasonable now they shouldn't plan on the young being reasonable later.

And yes, Gingrich wants some reforms here and there but he also wishes to pander, along with Nancy Pelosi, and perpetuate the fiction that this is all just a minor accounting thing that can be corrected with a band-aid here or there.

But none of that intergenerational warfare stuff is funny, while that press release is a scream.

Done Before and Better By James Lileks: Lileks already did this in a podcast. At around 3:45.

Thanks to Whatever.

I got this from Hot Air, but rather than link that (just to confirm I got it from there), here's Tom Coburn telling Gingrich to drink a nice tall glass of Where's Your Plan, Chief? juice.

Thanks to gg.

More: I hadn't seen the video of Newt's heckling until now. Here's that exchange.

posted by Ace at 01:03 PM

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