G.O.P. Plan for Medicare Could Shape 2012 Races

By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
NYT

WASHINGTON — Just four months into their new majority, House Republicans face a potentially defining Medicare vote this week that is sure to become a centerpiece of Democratic efforts to recapture the House in 2012 and spill into the presidential and Senate campaigns as well.

Republicans acknowledge that the vote is risky, and party strategists have warned House leaders about the dangers, aides said. But Republicans are calculating that the political ground has shifted, making the public, concerned about the mounting national debt, receptive to proposals to rein in costs by reshaping the program.

Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker exploring a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, said proposing a major overhaul of entitlement programs was not as politically fraught as it might have been a decade ago. But he said Republicans must be vigilant in defending their actions and mindful that Democrats were poised to attack.

“I think it is a dangerous political exercise,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview Monday. “This is not something that Republicans can afford to handle lightly.”

(More here.)