Skip to main content

Letter to Newt

Mr. Gingrich: I watched your interview on Meet The Press. The whole thing, live. Mr. Gregory asked you hard questions. I thought you handled them rather well. He was tough on your history of ugly divorces. You responded humbly.


But you did undermine Rep. Paul Ryan, and in a harsh way. And you quite clearly talked about health care, clarifying your point of view on coverage after Meet The Press showed a video from their archives (they are really good at digging up old, on-the-record stuff). In that video clip you supported mandatory health care.

(I understand the concept of mandatory healthcare; otherwise I don't know how the freeloader problem is ever resolved. But if we are ever going to restore any powers to the Commerce Clause, I don't see how a Federal mandatory program is Constitutional. The courts will eventually let us know.)

Overall, I thought you did quite a good job.

Then I heard you this week on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. If I hadn't watched Meet The Press, I might have bought your spin. But I did. And your spin was disingenuous at best. Stating that the quote clip was 18 years old and out of context. Where was that on Sunday?

Charges of flip/flopping on issues don't mean much to me. I usually learn something every day I didn't know. Seems to me it would be pretty dopey not to change positions if new facts and circumstances emerge. If you want to change your position on this issue, do it. But man-up and don't start trying to obfuscate. In the interim, you shouldn't criticize Mr. Romney for his foray into healthcare...

I thought you were an interesting candidate, but now I have my doubts.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cover of The Future of Management My list of must-read business writers continues to expand.   Gary Hamel , however, author of What Matters Now , with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation , has been on the list for quite some time.   Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management , Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run. Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with somethi...

Stimulus Plan

Mr. President: The House stimulus bill is awful. Dangerous. Counter-productive. It has a very high probability of making things worse!. Your man Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be a tough guy: turn him loose on the House Dems - they are selling you down the river. Some simple tests: the spending will improve long-term productivity; the spending will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and the spending will happen fast; very, very fast. There may need to be some legislation to enable spending without years of environmental review. For example, spending on wind farms would improve long-run productivity and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But let's say the wind farm is a couple of miles offshore. You can't have environmental groups stopping the development to see if some fish will be harmed. This spending has to happen now. And, no tax cuts with the possible exception of AMT. People aren't going to spend any tax savings; they are going to pay their credit card bills or r...

Romney/Thompson dream ticket?

The role of Fred Thompson in yesterday's SC primary is as murky as his next step. Did he divide the religious vote and thereby hand Huckabee a loss? Or would those votes, had he not been there, have gone elsewhere? My instinct is that more of those votes would have gone to Romney or McCain than to Huckabee. Fred comes across to me as the thinking person's conservative: thoughtful on positions, a sense of history, a Federalist, serious about the war on terror and prepared to take the long view on it. His addresses have content, not sound bites - which may, unfortunately, be a drawback in 2008. Mitt is quickly seizing the stage as the most knowledgeable in the field on economics, growth and job creation. With a war still consuming dozens of billions, it isn't clear that the race will be won on voters' views of candidates job creation prowess. However, he gives off as much energy as Fred seems to absorb - Mitt's electron shell could power Fred. So, Mitt may be drawi...