What Gingrich, Romney and Obama have in common
By Ezra Klein,
WashPost
Published: November 28
According to the polls and the pundits, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are the two front-runners for the Republican nomination for president. That means both of them will spend the next few weeks trying to show that they are more competent, conservative, and generally Reagan-like than the other.
But I’m a uniter, not a divider. I don’t want to focus on the differences between Romney and Gingrich. I want to focus on the commonalities. Because these two men have a lot in common with not only each other but also with President Obama.
Both Gingrich and Romney, for instance, supported a universal health-care plan backed by an individual mandate requiring all Americans of means to purchase health-care insurance — just as Obama does.
They have their excuses, of course. Gingrich says he supported such a plan in the 1990s only because he was working to defeat HillaryCare. But that doesn’t explain why he published an op-ed in 2007 arguing that Congress should “require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.” And last week, David Corn of Mother Jones reported that that position was still on the Web site of Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation.
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: November 28
According to the polls and the pundits, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are the two front-runners for the Republican nomination for president. That means both of them will spend the next few weeks trying to show that they are more competent, conservative, and generally Reagan-like than the other.
But I’m a uniter, not a divider. I don’t want to focus on the differences between Romney and Gingrich. I want to focus on the commonalities. Because these two men have a lot in common with not only each other but also with President Obama.
Both Gingrich and Romney, for instance, supported a universal health-care plan backed by an individual mandate requiring all Americans of means to purchase health-care insurance — just as Obama does.
They have their excuses, of course. Gingrich says he supported such a plan in the 1990s only because he was working to defeat HillaryCare. But that doesn’t explain why he published an op-ed in 2007 arguing that Congress should “require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.” And last week, David Corn of Mother Jones reported that that position was still on the Web site of Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation.
(More here.)
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