Newt Gingrich had a cordial but pointed interview with Glenn Beck on Tuesday, who pushed him on his more moderate statements on health care and climate change over the years. And there’s actually quite a bit of substance to his responses that’s worth unpacking.
Beck played the infamous Meet The Press clip from May 2011 in which Gingrich blasted Paul Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare with a private voucher system and defended an individual mandate for health care, an interview that nearly destroyed his campaign singlehandedly. While Gingrich has mostly disavowed the mandate since then, he offered up an interesting response regarding Ryan’s plan:
GLENN BECK: Okay. Yet you seem to always be ââ this is longâterm individual mandate stuff. You seem to be very interested in the government finding the solution.
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, let’s go back to what I just said. What I was asked was if a program is unpopular, should the Republicans impose it anyway. We can go back and we can listen to exactly what I was asked on that show and what I said I stand by, which is in a free society, you don’t elect officials to impose on you things that you disagree with. We just went through this slide over ObamaCare.
This may seem minor, but it’s of a piece with Gingrich’s past explanations for his Ryancare remarks and not an offhand line. Gingrich’s frank argument that Republicans should not impose unpopular and politically damaging policies — even if they really want them — represents a very different MO than the current conservative movement. Republicans have distinguished themselves in polls from other groups by blasting compromise of any sort, even if the consequences are disastrous. 66% of Republicans told pollster YouGov earlier this year during a string of tough budget standoffs that they want a politician who “sticks to his principles, no matter what” rather than compromises to get things done. And the effect is even more pronounced for Tea Party-affiliated voters, who are crucial to Gingrich’s resurgence.
Given that Republicans are facing an election where many of their top priorities — keeping taxes on the wealthy low, cutting entitlements, etc. — are miserably unpopular in polls, it’s a particularly relevant issue heading into the 2012 campaign. Keep an eye on answers like this from Gingrich, they could come back to haunt him.
