The Man Who Killed Republican Reform
The retiring House speaker played a huge role in shaping today’s GOP.
It’s hard to remember now, but a dozen years ago the conservative world was pulsing with intellectual creativity. Paul Ryan did not kill that vitality single-handedly, but he ranks high among the principal suspects.
Those were days when Newt Gingrich on climate change. When Mitt Romney universal health coverage in Massachusetts in 2006—and Jim DeMint that accomplishment when he endorsed Romney for president in 2007. Tim Pawlenty urged Republicans to be the party of Sam’s Club, not the country club—and that phrase carried him to the governorship of Minnesota and a campaign for president.. I offered to the literature that same year. “The age of Reagan is over,” Gingrich pronounced, and a startling number of conservatives seemed to agree.
