Newt is not right. He gave aid and comfort to the enemy, and wants an individual mandate. You cannot spin silk out of this pigs ear.
Yes, he gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
But you cannot define his individual mandate to be anything remotely like Obamas’.
First, he says the individual states should develop and run the plans. That eliminates the federal mandate from this discussion.
As to what states ought to do, Newt gets fuzzy. He appears to only want some way to insure that people who can afford health insurance but refuse to buy it, then use healthcare but refuse to pay the bill, are required to pay what they can pay. His biggest bugaboo seems to be those who fall into that category.
He has no one to blame but himself that people keep clubbing him over the head with “he wants a mandate, he wants a mandate”, thereby implying he is for something like Obama’s mandate.
But just because it’s his own fault doesn’t make it right to make misleading statements about his position.