Newsmax
Buchanan: Gingrich Is 'Left Wing'
on Key Issues, Left of GOP Base
Monday, May 16, 2011 11:37 AM
By: David A. Patten
House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s decision to embrace the individual
insurance mandate – a key part of the Obamacare health plan – and his
charge that GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan is radical “right wing social
engineering" has cut him off “from the vast majority of the
Republican Party,” according to MSNBC political analyst and longtime
conservative icon Patrick J. Buchanan.
Buchanan, who served as a White House adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford,
and Reagan, added: “When you come out for the individual mandate … you
must be writing off today 75 percent of the Republican Party, which has
as a major issue overturning that in the Supreme Court.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, Buchanan added that said that
President Barack Obama and Democrats are the key beneficiaries of
Gingrich’s barrage that erupted Sunday during his interview on “Meet the
Press.”
“I can’t think of a prominent Republican nationally who is coming out for
a national individual mandate. That’s the Obama position,” Buchanan
said.
Buchanan was also mystified by Gingrich’s strident critique of Ryan’s
plan on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“What Newt is doing is what the left wing of the Democratic Party is
doing up there in that District 26 race in New York,” Buchanan said,
“which is trashing Paul Ryan as a radical. It’s not simply saying,
‘Ryan’s got a courageous plan, I’m taking a look at it.’ It’s trashing
it.
“This is the position of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama right now
politically that they’re going to take into the campaign of 2012,
hammering Ryan as a radical and Newt Gingrich has just dealt them
aces,” Buchanan said.
Gingrich said on Meet the Press on Sunday that he stood by comments he
made as early as 1993 that government should require all citizens to
purchase insurance or a bond to cover health emergencies. Gingrich also
favors government subsidies and vouchers for people who can’t
afford to purchase their own insurance.
When NBC host David Gregory shot back: “That is the individual mandate,
isn’t it?” Gingrich responded, “It’s a variation of it.”
Since his appearance Gingrich has qualified his statement by saying he
does not support a federal mandate and supports the full repeal of
Obamacare.
But it remains unclear how Gingrich would require every citizen to have
health insurance if it is not enforced by the federal government, and a
statewide system sounds eerily like Romneycare, the statewide system
instituted in Massachusetts by Gov. Mitt Romney.
That Gingrich, the former Georgia congressman who led efforts to force
President Bill Clinton to balance the budget after the Republican
revolution of 1994, would come out in favor of a form of the individual
mandate that GOP leaders have almost universally opposed in recent years
caught several political analysts by surprise.
Said Buchanan: “He has really cut himself off not only from the tea party
but from the vast majority of the Republican Party.
“When you talk about that individual mandate, [state Attorney General]
Ken Cuccinelli down in Virginia is challenging it before the Supreme
Court and the whole party … Secondly … he not only distanced himself from
Ryan’s plan … but [Gingrich] repudiated it almost entirely. Basically, he
is out on the left wing of the Republican Party on I think the most
crucial economic issue, besides the economy itself.”
Time magazine political guru Mark Halperin called Gingrich’s repudiation
of Ryan and his endorsement of the individual mandate “two pretty out
there positions.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who was part of the 1994 GOP-controlled House
of Representatives that worked with Gingrich and former President Clinton
to balance the budget said: “I’ve got to say this confirms my previous
concern about Newt Gingrich over the past 15 years, that rhetorically,
he’s far, far right. But when push comes to shove, he’s in the mushy
middle.
“I mean he didn’t get run out of Washington by us in ’98 because … he was
a fire breather. He got run out of Washington because he kept cutting
deals with Democrats, and then attacked us for being too conservative
fiscally.”
Scarborough said Gingrich’s controversial remarks Sunday appeared to
reflect views Gingrich espoused earlier in his career.
“It was Newt in 1974 and 1976, when he ran as a Rockefeller Republican,”
he said.
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
