Thursday, June 9, 2011

You Should Know: Five Facts About Newt Gingrich

By Brad Woodhouse

A former Georgia congressman and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich has developed a reputation for opportunism, blind partisanship, and political expediency—especially when he's trying to sell a new book. Now, in a quest to reinvent himself as a Republican primary contender, Gingrich is flip-flopping on Medicare, opposing help for those looking for work, belittling the science of climate change, and misrepresenting his own experience in business.

His record makes it clear that Newt Gingrich is laser focused on one thing only: what's good for Newt Gingrich.

Here are five things you should know:

1) Newt Gingrich admitted that Republicans wanted to get rid of Medicare but because of political concerns, it would be better to let it “wither on the vine.” At a 1995 Blue Cross/Blue Shield conference, Gingrich (confusingly) compared Medicare to Russian bureaucracy, and then went on to say, “We don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it –voluntarily.”(New York Times, 7/20/96)

2) Newt Gingrich criticized the Ryan Republican plan that would end Medicare as we know it but then flipped his position after widespread Republican outcry. After claiming (Read on)

Source: DNC

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