Posted on 05/18/2011 10:10:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
How is your week going? Most likely its going much better than GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Why? Just days after officially announcing his candidacy, respected political pundit Charles Krauthammer said of Gingrich’s candidacy “It’s done, it’s over.” Last night during an appearance on On the Record Newt continued to walk back his Sunday critique of Paul Ryan’s health care plan, in a stark manner.
To say that Gingrich is in crisis mode is not necessarily hyperbole. The former House Speaker and GOP thought leader has been toying with running for president for what seems like years now, and coming out of the gate, he has more than stumbled; he’s fallen flat. It all started when he appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday and told host David Gregory that he believed that there should be an individual mandate, before labeling the plan put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and supported by nearly the entire House Republicans, as “radical.”
Since then he’s put out his own YouTube video repudiating the comments he made on Sunday, but had to deal with rejections from various political leaders including SC Governor Nikki Haley and Eric Cantor (R-VA.) Host Greta Van Susteren deserves credit for not only booking Gingrich, but for providing a tough interview with her former Fox News cohort.
Ginrich’s walking back of these comments in such thorough and dramatic fashion appears to indicate that he recognizes the folly, or he is not tone deaf to the roar of criticisms from his GOP peers. Nonetheless, one can imagine a future campaign ad that mimics the classic John Kerry video clip of “I was before it before I was against it.” And while Gingrich appears to be taking someone of a litigious position with statements of “falsehood” and the impression of libel, its very difficult to imagine that he and or campaign would ever pursue such a case, guaranteeing that this confusing chapter in Gingrich’s candidacy stays in the news.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO
Anyone have a transcript of the original offending commentary? I’d like to know what he actually said.
Stick a fork in Newt, he is D O N E!
RE: Anyone have a transcript of the original offending commentary? I’d like to know what he actually said.
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You can listen and view what he said in the VIDEO on this web page :
Any ad that uses words I have said, must be a lie. But I would never lie. Oh wait, does that mean its the truth.
Save some time Newt. Go back to writing books and being a talking head.
Your time came and went in 94. Thanks for what you did, but it is time to move on.
The complete TEXT transcript of Newt’s interview with david Gregory of NBC can be found here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43022759/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/meet-press-transcript-may/
Here is the offending portion :
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MR. GREGORY: What about entitlements? The Medicare trust fund, in stories that have come out over the weekend, is now going to be depleted by 2024, five years earlier than predicted. Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors...
REP. GINGRICH: Right.
MR. GREGORY: ...some premium support and—so that they can go out and buy private insurance?
REP. GINGRICH: I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors. But there are specific things you can do. At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called “Stop Paying the Crooks.” We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington. We—between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks. And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa’s agreed to help solve it. You can’t get anybody in this town to look at it. That’s, that’s almost $1 trillion over a decade. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.
MR. GREGORY: But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.
REP. GINGRICH: I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the—I don’t want to—I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.
If that's as offensive as it got it sounds like a lot of people, including in this thread, are mis-characterizing it, and/or allowing the predictably dishonest MSM to sell then their spun version.
Tonight on FOX Sarah Palin reiterated my contention that it’s David Gregory who should be the target of our wrath, not Newt Gingrich.
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