David Gregory Goes Beyond Russert’s ‘Gotcha’ Style to Get Gingrich
WASHINGTON – Newt’s pulling a Palin, blaming David Gregory for having told the truth on “Meet the Press.” Mr. Gingrich had been on MTP 34 times, so this won’t fly. The “set up” issue in the quote below is about Tim Russert, because that was his interview style. It’s landed Rockefeller Newt in the new ad shown above, giving Newt and the Republicans the nightmare they feared: ending Medicare, the new GOP litmus test. What’s hilarious is that even Donald Trump warned what the Ryan plan would do for Democrats, which is now coming true, compliments of Newt’s gaffe, which in Washington speak is translated as the truth.
Earlier Tuesday, Gingrich — who’d made 34 previous appearances on “Meet the Press” – said on a conference call that he “didn’t go in [to the interview] quite hostile enough, because it didn’t occur to me going in that you’d have a series of setups.” – NBC’s David Gregory Defends Medicare Question As Newt Gingrich Spokesman Blasts Media ‘Minions’
Gingrich buzz-sawed himself through talking points he thought would play well with a larger audience. Unfortunately, Republicans disabused him quickly that he’s going to waltz right into the nomination. What sounds good to the wider electorate and viewer, which made Gingrich 2.0 sound sane, won’t cut it for Republican primary voters, which Gingrich found out in swift order.
From the transcript where Newt got caught up on his own words:
MR. GREGORY: What about entitlements? The Medicare trust fund, in stories that have come out over the weekend, is now going to be depleted by 2024, five years earlier than predicted. Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors…
REP. GINGRICH: Right.
MR. GREGORY: …some premium support and–so that they can go out and buy private insurance?
REP. GINGRICH: I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors. But there are specific things you can do. At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called “Stop Paying the Crooks.” We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington. We–between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks. And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa’s agreed to help solve it. You can’t get anybody in this town to look at it. That’s, that’s almost $1 trillion over a decade. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.
MR. GREGORY: But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.
REP. GINGRICH: I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the–I don’t want to–I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.
There is nothing sneaky or underhanded in what Gregory asked, but he got the story by simply engaging Gingrich and letting him talk.
NBC News had a long run with the late Tim Russert, but his gotcha style, combative interviews where he always waited to spring a ridiculous question like “what’s your favorite Bible verse,” served no one. That Russert rarely included women in his line-up was a continual beef with me, which I wrote about for years. When you’re talking about the world women matter, but Russert froze out women as headliners, while also preferring Republicans.
If we got into the “If it’s Sunday it’s Misogyny” angle, all Sunday shows would lose and so do women, though at least today we have women anchoring them, Candy Crowley on CNN and Christiane Amanpour on ABC.
David Gregory exposed Newt Gingrich through fair, open debate. Katie Couric did the same thing when she interviewed Sarah Palin, as did Rachel Maddow when she interview Rand Paul and he ended up tying himself in knots over the Civil Rights Act.
No “set up” was used to coerce Mr. Gingrich, just straight out conversation that unfolded into a political death trap that Rockefeller Newt is still trying to explain his way out of but simply can’t.
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.
6 Responses to “David Gregory Goes Beyond Russert’s ‘Gotcha’ Style to Get Gingrich”
I’m still shocked that the GOP is still talking about ending Medicare…talk about political suicide.
Seniors will not be happy come election time and the GOP will pay.
The smarter Republicans recoiled from advocating that — or at least, some smarter Republicans. It’s not even a hard-bargain starting point for budget negotiations with the Democrats. It’s politically suicidal, too, even though many righty ratio talkers have blasted Gingrich for (on Gregory’s show) rejecting it.
They (the GOP) have now also really made the public leery of their future attempts at Social Security reform, I believe.
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Also, when Gingrich said this, I was surprised:
I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. … I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.
The Republicans never have been the “extremists” the Dems claimed them to be at the time, but recall that after 1994 there truly were radical (not extremist, but radical, going all the way down to the roots of the welfare state and oversized federal government that involves itself in too much since the 1930s). Abolishing complete federal departments was an example of this, as well as “devolution” of federally assumed functions to the states. (Being willing to transfer functions from abolished departments to retained departments obviously wasn’t.)
ShannonLeee says:
May 19, 2011 at 12:39 pm
I’m still shocked that the GOP is still talking about ending Medicare…talk about political suicide.
Establishment GOP have been struggling since Ryan lowered the boom on ending Medicare.
Gingrich simply told the truth. What Republicans are suggesting is RADICAL.
Gingrich also proved that ending Medicare is the new GOP litmus test. For once the Democratic ad, which is at the top, gets it exactly correct.
DLS says:
May 19, 2011 at 1:00 pm (Edit)
They (the GOP) have now also really made the public leery of their future attempts at Social Security reform, I believe.
The public was ALWAYS “leery” of SS “reform.”
T.M.: You’re right about Social Security (and Medicare) reform or “reform,” but a lot of that is the entitlement attitude about those entitlements; the programs are unsustainable and reform must be inevitable. That includes reduced Social Security benefits for middle- and high-income retirees (as well as raising the retirement age) as a likely possibility, even though I predict many will find the benefits inadequate, ironically. (That’s truly inadequate, not the demands of overgrown children, “not a safety net, but a hammock.”)
Many polls about the federal budget and about entitlement reform reveal much of the public demands the impossible: They don’t want spending reduced nor do they want taxes increased.
One of the problems the Dems have right now is that they’re avoiding entitlement reform. (Reid’s “Social Security is fine, no need to touch it for thirty years” is sheer lunacy.) Ryan’s Medicare proposal was outside normal boundaries, shall we say, but as many also say, at least he, someone (or some people) in the GOP at least had a reform proposal. The Dems were deliberately negligent and inspired anger in 2005 by wanting to do nothing to Social Security, insisting it’s fine (it obviously is not).
Real entitlement reform is unlikely until it is forced. (And that’s when many politicians will retire — as with eventual austerity for federal finance and possibly a reduction in federal functions, in general, also triggering retirements; “it’s not fun any longer.”)
Actually, I heard something today from Gingrich that was more cynical and of a more planned, engineered“gotcha” nature than what Gregory could have been accused of doing.
Today Gingrich said he did not hear Obama’s speech, “and I won’t have anything to say until we [campaign team] analyze it”
No doubt this happens all the time, but it really irked me to hear it, given Gingrich’s crassness and his frequent reversals on issues this year.