Newt will spin with the best of them. He stated the reason he was porking his mistresses was b/c he loved his country so much. His answers a few months back regarding Paul Ryan were all over the place. He came back full circle this week when he he said he stood by his comments re: Ryan and right wing social engineering. He has discussed how horrible TARP was, yet stated that he would have voted for it.
But this is small stuff compared to the fact that as a grown learned man he was of the opinion that it is constitutional for the federal government to have to power to force me to buy health insurance, Callista's Tiffany & Co. jewelry, or any other service or good.
Newt’s past transgressions are history. The jewelry he bought Calista was paid for with HIS own money..that is his business. His answer regarding Ryan is very explicit..have you read it or heard it? it is crystal clear.
With respect to President Obama’s health insurance mandate, Newt believes it is an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power. If the federal government can coerce individuals—by threat of fines—to buy health insurance, there is no stopping the federal government from forcing Americans to buy any good or service. It is a serious and unconstitutional infringement of individual liberty.
With respect to Governor Romney’s mandate, we have observed that it doesn’t achieve its goal of providing low cost catastrophic coverage for the uninsured. The intractable problem we have learned from experience with health insurance mandates is this: once you have a mandate, the government has to specify exactly what coverage must be included in insurance for it to qualify. This introduces political considerations into determining these minimum standards, guaranteeing that nothing desired by the special interests will be left out.
In the 1990s, Newt and many other conservatives, such as the Heritage Foundation, proposed a mandate to purchase health insurance as the alternative to Hillarycare. However, the problems outlined above caused Newt to come to the principled conclusion that a mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, unworkable and counterproductive to lowering the cost of healthcare.
Today, Newt carries the banner in fighting for the repeal of Obamacare and advocates for a “patient power” replacement that will create a free market framework for healthcare, provide affordable, portable, and reliable healthcare coverage, and establish a healthcare safety net focused on those truly in need. This system moves us towards the goal of healthcare for all with no unconstitutional mandate of any kind.
Newt on Healthcare