Glenn Beck Plays 'Gotcha' with Gingrich on Health Care
In news to add to your Republican flip-floppiness mental cache, Newt Gingrich kind-of, sort-of, voiced his support of an individual healthcare mandate this morning on Glenn Beck's radio show. The Republican hopeful went on Beck's show this morning and was subjected to, well, a bit of "gotcha journalism" and the sound of his own voice:
GLENN: All right. Well, and I think this is where we fundamentally differ is it seems to me ‑‑ and let me just play the audio here ‑‑ that you are for the individual mandate for healthcare and you have been for quite some time. Let’s play the audio.
GINGRICH: I am for people, individuals, exactly like automobile insurance, individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so it will ensure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.
GLENN: Okay. That’s 1993. Here is May 2011.
GINGRICH: All of a sudden responsibility to help pay for healthcare. And I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement to either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you are going to be held accountable.
VOICE: That is the individual mandate, is it not?
GINGRICH: It’s a variation on it.
The exchange between the two isn't unlike hearing amateur historians talk about their selective views on history. But Gingrich's current (is it passing?) support for a "variation on" the individual mandate does fall into line with what his think tank has suggested and Gingrich's noted historical support of "Hillarycare." And all that noise is a different tune than what told ABC four days ago when he stated "I think a mandate per se is clearly unconstitutional because it means the Congress can require you to do anything with your own money under any circumstances, I think that’s the argument of unconstitutionality in the long run." So, perhaps thanks to Beck, we've further cemented what we knew about Gingrich's position on healthcare, which is just to have a constantly-shifting view on healthcare.
