The GOP Civil War Over The Ryan Budget, Ctd

Douthat moderates the fight:

There’s no reason why [Gingrich] should be expected to endorse the Ryan budget in its entirety, and every reason for a politician who fancies himself a deep policy thinker to suggest his own alternative vision. But he didn’t suggest an alternative: He first denounced Ryan for “right-wing social engineering” (for conservatives, them’s fighting words!) and then, when pressed about his own plan for entitlement reform, offered banalities about starting the proverbial “a national conversation” about Medicare and (inevitably) cutting waste, fraud and abuse. This wasn’t a productive response to the Ryan budget; it was an attempt to ignore the high bar that Ryan set, and return the entitlement conversation to the untenable, unserious status quo ante.