Gingrich Site Seeks to Allay Conservatives’ Fears
By JIM RUTENBERG
NYT
Surging in polls and seeking to avoid the plight of those in the Republican race for president who have risen before him — only to plummet under scrutiny — Newt Gingrich has released a message for the party activists who will be crucial to his hopes of winning his party’s nomination: Those positions I once held that are now out of step with current-day conservative orthodoxy? I’ve changed.
A new Gingrich campaign Web page titled “Answering the Attacks,” has 16 chapters addressing potential lightning rods for his candidacy. Seven of them address issues in which, the site says, he now admits he was simply wrong, had taken a position that he mistakenly believed would have a different outcome, or, in the case of his personal life, behaved in ways he now regrets.
On his support in the 1990s for a plan to mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance, the Web site says Mr. Gingrich has “come to the principled conclusion that a mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, unworkable and counterproductive to lowering the cost of health care.”
The site said that Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, had initially backed the idea of a mandate along with the conservative Heritage Foundation as an alternative to the plan being pushed at the time by former President Bill Clinton. But, the site asserts, he changed his position after observing a mandate in action in the health care overhaul enacted in Massachusetts by former Gov. Mitt Romney and after concluding that a national mandate would be unconstitutional.
(More here.)
NYT
Surging in polls and seeking to avoid the plight of those in the Republican race for president who have risen before him — only to plummet under scrutiny — Newt Gingrich has released a message for the party activists who will be crucial to his hopes of winning his party’s nomination: Those positions I once held that are now out of step with current-day conservative orthodoxy? I’ve changed.
A new Gingrich campaign Web page titled “Answering the Attacks,” has 16 chapters addressing potential lightning rods for his candidacy. Seven of them address issues in which, the site says, he now admits he was simply wrong, had taken a position that he mistakenly believed would have a different outcome, or, in the case of his personal life, behaved in ways he now regrets.
On his support in the 1990s for a plan to mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance, the Web site says Mr. Gingrich has “come to the principled conclusion that a mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, unworkable and counterproductive to lowering the cost of health care.”
The site said that Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, had initially backed the idea of a mandate along with the conservative Heritage Foundation as an alternative to the plan being pushed at the time by former President Bill Clinton. But, the site asserts, he changed his position after observing a mandate in action in the health care overhaul enacted in Massachusetts by former Gov. Mitt Romney and after concluding that a national mandate would be unconstitutional.
(More here.)
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