But at the same time Newt tries to wrap himself in the Reagan mantle, he also exhibits another nostalgic tic that should give conservatives agita. Newt is an unabashed admirer of the Roosevelts — Theodore and Franklin. Together those two presidents embodied the Progressive Era and the New Deal, developments which dramatically expanded Washington’s powers and radically changed the expectations Americans had of government.
Just last week, Newt made clear his desire to emulate the two men when he told Newsweek magazine that, in handling intractable problems such as poverty, “we’re gonna experiment and experiment and experiment until we break through.” When Newsweek’s Peter Boyer dryly noted that this might “not please the ear of a small-government conservative,” Gingrich didn’t flinch: “It makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.”
I am pretty stunned that Gingrich, for all his brilliance, is so unreservedly pro-Roosevelt during a Republican primary. What is he thinking? It's going to be pretty difficult to win over the tea party crowd if you evince nostalgia for the two presidents who are most to blame for the deleterious accretions of big-government.
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