Newt Gingrich's impoverished supply of Big Ideas

I have questioned again, in this morning's column, all this "Big Idea" business that envelops Newt Gingrich like some kind of celestial aura. Really. I'm stumped. Because I can't seem to locate even one.

This morning, for instance, I rather heroically visited his Web site, Newt.org, which presented itself as most helpful in transporting me to yet another page, "12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity."

Perfect, I thought. Now I can finally encounter not just one Big Idea, but a whole dozen of them, fresh from Newt's Big-Brain factory.

But, alas, I came away somewhat dispirited about America's prospects for jobs and prosperity, since Newt, in fact, had utterly nothing new or Big or nation-saving to say about them.

No less than half of his "12 Solutions" are -- you guessed it -- tax cuts in one form or another; and the balance of Newt's solutions to employ and enrich us all entail merely lower government spending, less government fraud (now why didn't I think of that?), "affordable energy," union-bashing, advocacy of undefined government "rules that create jobs" (say, isn't that what his Web site was supposed to enlighten us about?), and -- yes, I've saved the best for last -- "a 21st century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel." Breathtaking.

Still, I persisted in my plucky pursuit of Big-Idea Newt. Perhaps someone else had delineated -- on Newt's behalf; you know, because he's so diffident about taking credit for brilliance -- a few of his Big Ideas. And the first relevant Googled result was a Huffington piece, from 2007, which noted that in his CPAC appearance that year he "repeatedly stressed that conservatives have better solutions and proposals than Democrats ... yet despite his praise for solutions and proposals, Gingrich did not go far to elucidate what big ideas conservatives could put forward to make America better."

Yeah, but I hear you cry ... the Huffington Post? -- come on, be fair. And my answer to that reasonable objection would be that there were no accompanying pieces from the Google search I performed that did, in either a friendly or unfriendly way, spell out just what, precisely, all these Big Ideas of Newt's are.

And that is because, I am left to conclude, they simply don't exist.

Comments

[BOBBY DECKER]

NEWT WORLD ORDER 2012.....BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR I REMEMBER THE DEMOCRATC PARTY DREAM IN 1980 WAS TO RUN AGAINTS
SOME OLD CRACKER FROM CALIFORNIA !
.......ANYONE REMEMBER HOW THAT WORKED OUT ! ?

SOMEWERE ROD SERLINGS LAFFING TILL HE PEES HIS PANTS !

[Stephan Wade]

Newt the pompous windbag
Lies easily
and his oily opines
and army brat whines
betray his psuedo philosophy

[ernieson]

How can anyone give this hypocritical bag of wind any credibility? How about that congressional leadership job he lost while hypocritically calling for Clinton's head while the 2 time adulterous Newtster was bopping his secretary? His contract for America and his being a man of ideas are bogus.