Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is typically labelled as a "man of ideas" within right-wing circles. Gingrich, however, can only be considered a second-rate thinker when compared with Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. The depth, subtlety and audacity, I hope you will see, of Ryan's thinking has no equal.
Recently, Ryan suggested (here) that the President of the United States be given line-item veto authority. Now, some critics have called this "fakery" (here) because the US Supreme Court in 1998 has already ruled that only a constitutional amendment, not Congressional action, would be able to give such power to the US President (read the entire history here). However, Ryan's ability to out-think and even seduce his intellectual inferiors is really remarkable. Even Russ Feingold, ex-senator, D-WI, has endorsed Ryan's proposal (in the video above). I honestly can't imagine Russ Feingold agreeing with anything that Newt Gingrich would say, but Ryan presents a whole different level of persuasive reasoning.
The Governor of the State of Wisconsin (currently, Republican Scott Walker who realizes that the Wisconsin veto is his secret weapon) enjoys a "quirky" form of the line item veto which has been called the "Frankenstein" veto (here) since it allows the entire intention of legislation to be rewritten with creative editing. So, Wisconsin's experience (here) is quite revealing:
[The Wisconsin line item-veto]... has been used primarily as a tool of policy choice and partisan advantage rather than of fiscal restraint. Based on the Wisconsin experience, the author suggests that a presidential item veto could well be used largely as a resource to gain partisan leverage in pursuit of the President's policy agenda.
Paul Ryan has the intellectual subtlety to reason away his home State's experience with the item veto and bamboozle his intellectual inferiors into drinking the Kool-Aid of fiscal restraint. Gingrich simply does not have this level of intellectual fire power.
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