Here’s the transcript of the interview. It’s pretty much known at this point that Newt’s RINO enemies started this primary looking for something to knock Newt out of the race and latched onto this out-of-context quote as their opening salvo to try to cut his legs off. This isn’t an issue in the general election, so why bring it up as a basis on who we should nominate? Mitt won’t be attacking Newt in the general election and Obama can’t attack Newt “from the right” on health care, it just doesn’t make one bit of logical sense.
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 .
And so he ends the interview:
“I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.”
That’s what he called Ryan’s Plan and got blasted by Rush and Levin.
Stop blaming everyone else for Newts actions and words.
He lost a lot of us because of what he's said not what anyone else said about what he said.
Except for his home state he's had a rough time getting out of 4th place sometimes behind Rue Paul.