Newt Gingrich apologizes to Paul Ryan for his budget comment

  It appears as if Newt Gingrich–after feeling the heat from conservatives–has flip-flopped once again. As I wrote about in this post, when Paul Ryan introduced his budget, and before Gingrich had made up his mind to run for president, Newt spoke glowingly of the proposal. He claimed that Paul Ryan’s budget was a serious effort at reform and would “define modern conservatism.”

  But after declaring his candidacy, and while attempting to woo the senior vote, Gingrich flip-flopped on Paul Ryan and undercut the Republican efforts to bring the budget under control by calling the proposal “radical” and “right-wing social engineering.”

  And now that Newt Gingrich is feeling the heat from Republicans and conservatives around the blogoshere he called Paul Ryan to apologize for stabbing him in the back; claiming that he didn’t properly articulate what he was trying to say. I am sorry Newt but I do not believe that you misspoke, I feel as if you said what you meant and you did it for purely selfish, political reasons.

  I am one that believes a politician should have principles and it is becoming clear that the only principle that Newt Gingrich has is his desire to become president; he will say whatever he feels is necessary at the time for him to achieve this goal and this is precisely what he did on “Meet the Press.” He felt that senior citizens would be opposed to the Ryan budget and he made an attempt to pander to them, and it was only after he realized that he had alienated the Republican base that he decided to apologize to Paul Ryan.

 There is no doubt in my mind that if the reaction to Gingrich’s criticism of the Ryan budget was positive he would have gone on the road trying to rally people around his position, instead of trying to backtrack from it. Newt’s endgame is winning the White House at all costs and in his mind the end justifies the means, and if that means that he lacks core values–or is willing to change these values on a whim–than he feels it is justified.

  How are the voters supposed to know where Newt Gingrich truly stands on the issues when his position is so rapidly evolving based on the political winds? Barack Obama purposely left the Illinois State Senate with a blank slate by voting “present” whenever possible so that he couldn’t be tied down to a specific vote, and Newt Gingrich isn’t much better for he is trying to muddy the waters with an ever shifting political viewpoint–in that regard he’s more like John Kerry than he is a true conservative. (He was for Paul Ryan’s budget before he was against it.)

  And aide tried to defend Newt Gingrich by saying, “we’ve tried to correct the record and admit it could have been done better, we move on.”

  And it is time for the American people to move on as well…..away from Newt Gingrich.