Mitt vs Newt, Pragmatic vs Epic

There is an excellent article running in the Washington Post today entitled "Romney's and Gingrich's ideas mirror their personalities: Pragmatic vs. epic."
While I am at the point in time, 100% in the Romney camp, I was very vocal about supporting Gingrich for most of the fall. I was determined to stay open-minded, and to not be another Mormon choosing Romney without considering all of the candidates first. I was torn between Romney and Gingrich for a very long time, finally landing on Romney for much of the reasons stated in this article- he makes more sense. Gingrich makes radical, huge, even epic statements, and they can be attractive. But once I stopped and thought about it, I just couldn't follow his lead anymore. Whereas, it is easy to believe, even reassuring to believe, that Romney is capable of fulfilling his ideas and promises.
When Gingrich says, "I'm more of a conservative than Mitt Romney," he really isn't. He's really just more of an extremist. Their ideas and promises (minus moon colonies) are side-by-side similar. But Gingrich just takes everything beyond capable and believable, and moves it into radical extremism.


From the article-

If he were elected president, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney says, he would cut companies’ tax bills. But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) would cut them more than twice as much.
Romney would eliminate some people’s capital-gains taxes. But Gingrich would eliminate everybody’s.

And Romney would build more Navy ships to project American influence into the Middle East. Gingrich would build a moon colony, projecting it into outer space.

Gingrich has vowed to  overthrow the communist government in Cuba and ban embryonic stem-cell research. Romney? Merely wants Castro to go to Hell (and to try to negotiate with Cuba).


Both candidates (actually all four candidates) want to repeal Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulations. They all want to repeal the estate tax, tougher dealings with Iran, and they are all in favor of a same-sex marriage ban.

But back to the epic vs the pragmatic-

Romney’s plan would lower a corporation’s tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. For individual taxpayers making less than $200,000 per couple, he would end taxes on capital gains and interest. The cost? Probably about $180 billion less in government revenue per year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
But Gingrich would do far more. He would cut the corporate rate to 12.5 percent. He would eliminate all taxes on capital gains and interest. And he would allow individuals to opt out of the current tax code, giving them the option of a 15 percent “flat tax” with limited deductions.
On Social Security, the two men exhibit a similar pattern. Romney would raise the age at which future retirees could collect benefits, adding “a year or two,” he said in a debate. And he would tinker with formulas so that wealthier retirees would see their benefits grow less over time.
Gingrich, by contrast, wants to create a new kind of Social Security. He would keep the old system but allow people to opt into a separate system, in which they could keep their money in private, personal accounts. The same private-account plan has worked in Chile, Gingrich is fond of saying.
But it was installed while Chile was run by a military dictator.

 And that last line, says it all.