Newt Gingrich has targeted...CBO, which (via Goddard) he called today a "reactionary socialist institution." CNN had a great response from conservative Republican former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin:
I think if you parse that phrase carefully, he got one out of three right. I do agree it is an institution. If you're playing baseball, that's a decent batting average.Well, Newt does love his words, doesn't he? And as has been the case for over thirty years, his standard operating procedure is to find institutions to tear down so that he can inherit the mess. Conservatives who are foolish enough to go along with his joke of a presidential campaign, beware: he'll turn against your institutions, too, if he thinks there's short-term advantage (or cash) to be had from it. And he's not even an especially good judge of that, either. Well, maybe the cash part; I don't really know.
The best texts on Newt, both of which I've mentioned many times, are John Barry's The Ambition and the Power and David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf, "Tell Newt to Shut Up!"
Or you can just listen to the guy for five minutes.
Update: This.
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Well, Gingrich it is, then.
ReplyDeleteObama's just as bought off as Gingrich could ever hope to be. And the Wall Street and crony corporatist thieves who bought him are quite gracious, and permit him him to sit at their right hand. So there's nothing to distinguish between Gingrich/Obama on that basis, unless it's that Gingrich might resist sitting at anybody's right hand, even God's.
But if Obama is to be replaced, and we seem to be developing a consensus on that, then the WS and crony corporatist thieves would like Romney, obviously. Although I suspect their fears are mistaken about it, Gingrich could prove to be a wild card for them, while Romney is a sure thing.
I never believed Romney would win the nomination, not after losing in '08 to one of the most despised men in America. If you can't win against that guy, when you were (self) funded enough to get it done, then you can't win. But that's why they play the games... you gotta prove it on the field.
It's actually impressive that Newt has been able to pass himself of as an intellectual solely by stringing together a bunch of big words with no actual thought behind them.
ReplyDeleteYour Newt posts are right up there with the Nixon historical posts.
ReplyDeleteI love the "reactionary" part. The CBO's job is to respond to legislative proposals that Congressmen send their way, so I...guess...it kinda makes sense? Though that would in no way be a negative.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking about this too hard. He's playing the faux-intellectual and stringing together big words because he knows the people he's talking to aren't going to bother to try and parse them.
Newt's hypocrisy knows no bounds. It must simplify things to have no conscience.
ReplyDeleteNewt blew up the OTA twenty years ago because it kept giving him the wrong answers. I don't know why the CBO would be any different.
ReplyDelete"Newt blew up the OTA twenty years ago because it kept giving him the wrong answers." In he 1990s he led the charge to destroy people's trust in any institution or profession that could be labeled "liberal." He and his cronies appropriated the very word (Dems responded by slinking away from the concept, as well as the label - see a pattern here?). To a great degree Newt et al have been succeeding - for instance, main-stream journalism used to be a respected, and boldly practiced profession.
ReplyDeleteNow, almost daily we see back-handed assaults on anyone who uses empirical methods to conclude anything that doesn't support conservative dogma. Forget about "liberalism;" it's people's awareness of factual reality that's being destroyed, all for electoral and financial advantage.
If the CBO is a "reactionary socialist institution," I guess that just makes it puzzling that Newt is a huge fan of the CBO. As you may recall, when Newt was leading the budget showdown in 1995, one of the sticking points was that Newt & the House GOP wanted to use (ahem) CBO budget projections instead of OMB projections. Newt & the GOP dragged out the government shutdown in defense of the CBO's projections.
ReplyDeleteGreg, that's exactly the type of comment that shows what's wrong with the liberal consensus that Newt is fighting against. Frankly, you just don't see that this has to be approached at a fundamentally deeper level than anyone in Washington is willing to consider.
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