Posted on 12/27/2011 11:20:59 AM PST by nickcarraway
If anybody actually cares about integrity and freedom, this latest news should be big trouble for Newt Gingrich. Somebody (I need to find out who) dug up this old memo from Gingrich praising Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan in fulsome terms, and especially praising its individual mandate to buy health insurance:
The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan. … In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.
On one hand, this isn’t the most astonishing news: Gingrich has been quoted for 17 years in favor of some sort of individual mandate, and this 2006 citation isn’t even the most recent one. On the other hand, Gingrich has insisted that his proposal was something a little different — some sort of “bond” that rich people would put up — and, also, that he really started moving away from even that “bond” mandate after a while because, really, the reason he was for a mandate was in order to have a conservative alternative to Hillarycare in 1994. At other times he has tried hard to play down or soften the edges of his support for a mandate. But this is unequivocal, and it is within the past six years, and it shows not a single hesitation about undermining individual liberty. Indeed, Gingrich’s only complaint is a class-warfare-inducing lament: Romney stuck the mandate on lower-middle-income earners, whereas Gingrich only would apply it to middle-middle-income earners. Gee, what a relief! (Not!)
Even worse, Gingrich is to the left of Romney on Romney’s own health plan. Romney at worst has only tentatively recommended Romneycare as a whole as a model for the nation; and this year, he has become like a broken record saying he would never impose a mandate via the federal government, and that Romneycare was an example of state-level federalism in action, unique to the circumstances of Massachusetts. Gingrich, on the other hand, wrote this: “The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.” Those lines led directly into his discussion of the mandate, which Gingrich described as an example of requiring “personal responsibility.”
All of which leads back to what I said in my May 17 column here on this site, namely that Gingrich and Romney both flunk conservative political philosophy. I repeat now what I wrote then: “[T]he issue here isn’t utility, but liberty. Mussolini ‘made the trains run on time,’ but that should never have justified his authoritarianism. Essential liberty must never be sacrificed on some central planner’s altar of efficiency.”
Or, for that matter, on some former Speaker’s warped notion of what does and doesn’t qualify as “personal responsibility.”
Instead of throwing out general characterizations of what he believes, why not give us some detail?
One more time: the cost of paying for the moochers is infinitely smaller than the cost of losing all your freedom. You are just playing into their hands.
I never said that we should loose all our freedoms. In fact I didn't say that we should loose any of our freedoms.
I did say that....
- Government shouldn't mandate anything.
- While we have government mandated health care(and that's what we do have right now), the moochers need to pay for their health care.
BTW, name a candidate who isn't for government mandated healthcare? (Notice I said "government mandated healthcare" and not "government mandated health insurance")
Don't put words in my mouth. You're not smart enough.
Thanks.
I read Toffler a looooonnnnng time ago, and IIRC his “hook” was that one can predict the future by observing the changing use of words in the media.
For example, if his word count analysis showed that the word “liberal” was being used less and the word “conservative” was being used more, then one could predict that the country was turning more conservative.
Toffler believed that civilization progresses through ages or “waves”. Hunter/gatherer societies lead to agricultural societies, which lead to trading societies which lead to industrial societies, which lead to “information” societies. No rocket-science there.
The observation that government structures that work for a tribal village will NOT work for a modern city is not rocket science either.
As you know, our Constitution was written by human beings. Therefore, our Constitution is NOT “holy writ” — so “perfect” it may never be changed. By its own terms, our Constitution may be amended — and it has been amended many times.
and surely, you find some aspects of our Constitution problematic — if not obsolete:
(1) IMHO, the absence of term limits has created an unexpected “elite” class of permanent “legislators”.
(2) IMHO, Congress passes “Onmnibus” spending bills in order to nullify the President’s congressional power to veto bad bills.
I could go on.
Has Gingrich ever SAID that he wanted to abolish the Constitution? If so, please provide a link...
I read Toffler a looooonnnnng time ago, and IIRC his “hook” was that one can predict the future by observing the changing use of words in the media.
For example, if his word count analysis showed that the word “liberal” was being used less and the word “conservative” was being used more, then one could predict that the country was turning more conservative.
Toffler believed that civilization progresses through ages or “waves”. Hunter/gatherer societies lead to agricultural societies, which lead to trading societies which lead to industrial societies, which lead to “information” societies. No rocket-science there.
The observation that government structures that work for a tribal village will NOT work for a modern city is not rocket science either.
As you know, our Constitution was written by human beings. Therefore, our Constitution is NOT “holy writ” — so “perfect” it may never be changed. By its own terms, our Constitution may be amended — and it has been amended many times.
and surely, you find some aspects of our Constitution problematic — if not obsolete:
(1) IMHO, the absence of term limits has created an unexpected “elite” class of permanent “legislators”.
(2) IMHO, Congress passes “Onmnibus” spending bills in order to nullify the President’s congressional power to veto bad bills.
I could go on.
Has Gingrich ever SAID that he wanted to abolish the Constitution? If so, please provide a link...
Newt is a professosr, prolific reader and author. It would be unusual for him not to recommend books for information, perspective and as cautionary.
I have noted before that Isaac Newton discovered gravity. He didn’t approve of it or disapprove....HE SIMPLY RECOGNIZED IT!!!!
I don’t think that I hammered Newt Gingrich, either. I’ve never trusted Mitt Romney, mostly because of Romneycare. Newt is much better on that.
Why would he promote that book if he disagreed with it’s central tenants?
WHAT are Toffler’s central tenants? Post 64 says something different than you’ve asserted.
I heard what he said, and that's not what he said. Should I assume you similarly exaggerate the rest of your claims? You choose to believe what Gingrich said 5 years ago and I choose to believe what he is saying now. He says he will dismantle Obamacare. I believe him.
What did he say and how do you justify it? How come Gingrich can say anything and you twist it to be positive? You deny he attacked conservatives? Everyone heard what he said?
Right not, he has a motivation to lie. Unfortunately, your vote for him believing his lies, will effect me. I have to live in his socialist nation targeting small business. What's the problem with voting for a real conservative? By your logic, we never should have voted for Reagan. Gingrich has always supported socialized medicine until it wasn't viable. (By the way, are you old enough to remember 98/99 when Gingrich betrayed his country and bailed out Bill Clinton?)
You need to keep repeating this over and over and stop backing out of it.
I don’t understand this. If we could do a “blind taste test,” or if we had a candidate exactly Gingrich, except a (d), he would be roundly thrashed around here.
He said “I’m not a fan of right-wing social engineering any more than I’m a fan of left-wing social engineering.” I happen to agree with that...I don’t want the government engaging in ANY social engineering...right or left.
He and the media think anything conservatives do is “social engineering.” The media got his message loud and clear: this is a chance to bash conservatives.
There you go again.
Can you find an example of anyone else using “right-wing social engineering,” that wasn’t a leftist?
You were a Freeper in 1998? You don’t remember how it was here then?
This short article is hardly a policy statement by Newt. It’s just some “thinking out loud” about the Romney plan. Newt has said repeatedly that the “bond” would be an option for people who didn’t want insurance. The author doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he claims Newt talked about a bond as the sole tenet of any plan.
The issue is we the insurance-holders and taxpayers have to pay for emergency room care for people who show up, even if they don’t have insurance and never pay. That was socialism and the status quo before Newt said a word about anything. If someone has a better solution to how to handle that, it would be nice to hear it, instead of nitpicking of other people’s plans and ideas.
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