YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT'S A BAD THING

I'm late getting to this, but I want to explain why it's futile, beyond the "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying ears?" absurdity:

Newt Gingrich said today that he wasn't referring to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) Medicare plan when he uttered the words "right-wing social engineering" last Sunday -- a comment that has earned the former House speaker a barrage of criticism that ultimately let him to call Ryan and apologize....

"It was not a reference to Paul Ryan. There was no reference to Paul Ryan in that answer," Gingrich told [Rush] Limbaugh....

It's futile because the wingnuts would still object even if there were a plausible case to be made that this wasn't a reference to Ryan. They'd object because -- and this is what Gingrich doesn't get -- they don't have a problem with "right-wing social engineering" in general. If you asked them, maybe they'd say that "social enginerring" is bad and government should just let us all be free. But really, to them, anything that they regard as genuinely right-wing is good. You can't criticize anything that's right-wing and expect to win their favor.

I don't know if they'd say that if it's right-wing it can't possible be "social engineering," or if they'd say "right-wing social engineering" is fine because it's "engineering" things back the way they're supposed to be, according to the Founding Fathers. But in any case, Gingrich can't criticize that, either, intending it as a criticism of Paul Ryan or not. The right wing is inerrant. It is exempt from criticism.