The GOP's Medicare Mess

Can anyone say today with any degree of certainty where the Republican Party is on "reforming" Medicare? Sure, nearly all House Republicans are stuck with a vote for a budget resolution whose most visible feature was Paul Ryan's proposals to voucherize Medicare and turn Medicaid into a block grant. Harry Reid may yet maneuver Senate Republicans into a similar vote. But in the meantime, the self-same Senate Republicans, most notably the Senator from the Club for Growth, Pat Toomey, and the Senator from the Tea Party, Jim DeMint, are backing a different budget that avoids any long-term changes to Medicare, opting instead for very deep cuts in non-defense discretionary spending. And now Newt Gingrich has come right out and said what his fellow-candidates-for-president seem to have privately concluded: Ryan's Medicare plan is "too big a jump" from a political point of view. The hysterical reaction of many conservatives to Gingrich's remarks has all the signs of an attack on a rogue commander who has sounded a retreat before it can be made to look "orderly" and "strategic." I suspect the original idea among Republicans was to embrace a "bold" form of "entitlement reform" in hopes that the White House would give them cover by accepting something a little less "bold" but aimed in the same direction. If so, it hasn't worked. And if Republicans manage to lose next week's House special election in New York after a campaign in which their candidate was pounded for supporting Ryan's budget, the retreat, orderly or not, is likely to begin in earnest.