Gingrich ’06 Memo: “Agree Entirely With Gov. Romney” on Health Care

[Richardo]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/gingrich-06-memo-agree-entirely-with-gov-romney-on-health-care/

To conservatives, the biggest strike against Mitt Romney is the health care plan he put in place in Massachusetts, but Newt Gingrich lavished praise on Romney’s plan after it was passed in 2006.

“We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans,” Gingrich wrote in 2006.

And, Gingrich wrote, the key to achieving that goal was doing what Romney did in Massachusetts: Requiring everybody who could afford it to buy health insurance. In fact, Gingrich makes an impassioned case for the so-called individual mandate — which is also at the center of President Obama’s health plan — on conservative grounds.

<snip>

Gingrich had some criticisms of the Massachusetts plan — including what he called the state’s over-regulation of health insurers — but overall, he loved it.

Here's the memo: http://web.archive.org/web/20060822061158/http:/www.healthtransformation.net/News/E_newsletters/index.cfm?newsletterid=20

[Renew Deal]

1. If a memo like this dropped in a Democratic campaign, DU would be on fire.

I'm kind of glad to not have primary wars to fight.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I think Obama was shocked by the R resistance to his health care plan--

after all, it was them he got it from.

But, to be fair, Newt was writing in 2006, and at that time there was no black Democrat in the White House to be flagellated over the plan.

[Richardo]

3. Righto

He could take any piece of GOP legislation, change the cover page, and it would not receive one GOP vote. Which is exactly what happened with healthcare.