I don't believe that Newt Gingrich's candidacy for the Presidency is real in the slightest.  Like Ron Paul or Sarah Palin, Newt makes a great deal of money selling books and himself as a speaker and lecturer, to conservative groups.  This candidacy is a way of using donor money to promote himself as a lecturer, author and pundit.  For Palin, it happened by accident.  But Newt's been an industry ever since he left office.

But I'm still surprised by how quickly he was sunk for criticizing Paul Ryan.  It's am amazing moment for modern conservatism when a Republican candidate can't argue that the continued existence of Medicare in something like its present form is a legitimate point of view to take.  Remember, most Republicans like their Medicare.  Even most Tea Partiers do.  But it's no longer okay with the mainstream Republican leadership.

Or maybe it's the coddling of Paul Ryan.  He's the new star, the new shining intellect.  Are they circling the wagons around him?  He doesn't take criticism well, and was reportedly irked when Obama took down his plan during an earlier budget debate.  So maybe this is just the party trying to protect one of its future candidates -- somebody they have big plans for.

Certainly, some of this is just the hard right swing of the party.  After all, it's not news around here that Obama's signature legislation on health care is at best a piece of center right work.  The individual mandate was once a Republican idea.  Requiring people to purchase insurance from private providers is what the Republicans wanted.  Absurdly, Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system is really a plan to turn a single payer health system for the elderly into something a lot more like what Obama pushed on the rest of America.  Back during the health care debate, some of us supported "Medicare of everyone and be done with it."  Ryan supports "Obamacare for everyone."

It's likely time for me to stop expecting all of this to add up.  I'm going to go with these conclusions: the Republicans stand for anything that Obama doesn't; Paul Ryan is not to be criticized because Republican donors have big plans for him down the line; Newt knows he doesn't have a chance but that this is his last opportunity to advertise his other wares on the national stage and so he needs to hang in there.