Glenn Beck recently floated the idea that he might vote for Ron Paul as a third party candidate if the GOP ends up with Newt Gingrich as the nominee. I've listened to his explanation a few times now and I am really having a hard time following it... basically, Beck is claiming that Gingrich is somehow a progressive, and that he prefers the lesser evil of Ron Paul's nutty foreign policy to Gingrich's progressivism.
Gingrich has supported a lot of stupid stuff, but is it really fair to call him a progressive? Seems to me like his problem is a defect of personality, not ideology. He has managed to come up with some pretty good ideas over the years, and he's come up with loads and loads of bad ones too... but he's such a vainglorious prick that he thinks all his ideas are equally brilliant.
Furthermore, even if you think Gingrich is a progressive, how is voting for a crank third party candidate going to keep progressivism out of the White House? There is no chance in hell that Ron Paul could ever come close to winning a presidential election... honestly, I don't think he could even manage to come in second in a three-man race. The only question would be whether or not he steals more anti-war votes away from Obama than he steals anti-Fed votes from Gingrich.
Update: Ok, if Gingrich is going to run around calling himself a "realpolitik Wilsonian" then I can't really criticize Glenn Beck for calling Gingrich a progressive.
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