Is Newt a Hypocrite on Health Care?

Back in 2006, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had a business and one aspect of that business was the creation and distribution of a newsletter.

According to reports, these two sentences was he said regarding the Health Care Act passed in Massachusetts under then Governor Romney.

"The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system," said an April 2006 newsletter published by Gingrich's former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation."

and

"We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans."

More recently (in 2011), Newt said this about Health Care

"Your [that is Romney's 2006] plan [presumably the same plan he said nice things about in 2006] essentially is one more big-government, bureaucratic, high-cost system,"

Is that hypocrisy?

One of the problems in this analysis is that the RomneyCare plan changed between the time it was sent to the Massachusetts legislature and the time it was signed and even after that. Romney sent legislation to the Massachusetts House and Senate in 2005 and there was considerable debate as changes were made to the bill. Eventually the State legislature sent Romney a bill. Romney vetoed 8 sections of the bill but the legislature eventually overrode all 8 vetoed sections. Thus, Gingrich could possibly be praising early versions of the bill and criticizing later sections.

In addition, the 2006 comments by Newt come with caveats, e.g., "...has tremendous potential for..." and "...our goal should be...". Thus the 2006 'endorsement' really isn't an endorsement at all.

In addition, Newt might simply have changed his mind (although if so, this should have been made explicit) or simply have made a mistake. On the latter point, Newt has admitted (in Dec 2011) that an appearance he made with then Speaker of the House Pelosi (in 2008) regarding the concept of 'cap and trade' for greenhouse gases was a dumb thing (the admission that something you've done was dumb is charming and is something I like in Gingrich possibly because I can't think of many other things I like about him).

No hypocrisy.

FoxNews article containing Newt's comments (both in 2006 and in 2011) is here.
More on the Romneycare bill is here.
More on the Gingrich policy on 'cap and trade' between 2008 and 2011 is here.

Paul: Gingrich - Serial Hypocrite

US Rep Ron Paul's campaign has released a video entitled, "Newt Gingrich, Serial Hypocrisy" (the image includes Mitt Romney between Newt and Gingrich because I couldn't find an image of just the two of them shaking hands).
The video (which is in black and white for some reason) brings up the fact that former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has taken money from Freddie Mac and an organization supporting the Affordable Healthcare Act of 2009 (aka Obamacare) while denouncing the problems presumed to be caused by Freddie Mac and those presumed to be caused in the future by Obamacare. Both of these sets of fact show Gingrich as being sleazy do not show hypocrisy. The video also shows Gingrich as supporting mandatory health care insurance and as supporting climate change action in a video with then (2009) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Assuming that Gingrich is now against both of these, a case could be made for hypocrisy but the video does not show Gingrich making the 'contrary' statement. To complicate the situation, Gingrich has now stated that the video with Pelosi was a dumb mistake. This does show (to conservatives) Gingrich as an unreliable conservative but that's not the same thing as hypocrisy.

The video is available here.
The Gingrich 'Pelosi statement a mistake' is here.
Irwin has suggested I might analyze this.