Often lost in the fight over Newt Gingrich’s takedown of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is that Gingrich had actually said only weeks earlier he’d have voted for it. He offered his support for the GOP budget once again on Tuesday night at an event in Minnesota.
“I would have voted for the budget,” he told a blogger for Media Matters. “The question is how do we go through taking the Medicare part of it and turning it into law, which is the next stage. But I would have voted for it. If you go to my website, you’ll see I wrote a newsletter endorsing it. He’s a very good friend of mine. And I think he’s doing a brilliant job.”
This is the same budget, of course, that includes the Medicare provision Gingrich blasted as “right wing social engineering,” “radical change from the right,” and “too big a jump” for the country. While Newt has profusely apologized for his choice of words, he has not backed down from his position that Ryan’s Medicare proposal is a political disaster for the Republican party.
So to summarize the current Newt line: He’s sorry for calling the GOP budget he would have voted for ‘radical,’ even though it would destroy his party’s electoral prospects for years to come.
Here’s video of Newt backing the Ryan budget:
