Gingrich: GOP Not "Offering Positive Alternatives"
Just days before former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich travels to Cape Girardeau to talk health care with Howard Dean, Gingrich acknowledged to ABC News Radio that his party's leaders are not putting forward the substantive alternative proposals they promised they would [emphasis added]:
With an ABCNews/Washington Post poll this week painting a dismal picture for the country’s opposition party, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blamed his fellow Republicans for their own sorry state.
"They’re not consistently, methodically, offering positive alternatives," Gingrich said Tuesday in an interview with ABC News Radio.
Only 19 percent of those polled said they had confidence in congressional Republicans to "make the right decisions for the country’s future." Just 20 percent in the survey identified themselves as Republicans – a low in ABC-Post polls dating to 1983 – continuing a precipitous decline in Republican self-identification that began in 2004.
Gingrich's comments echo those of current Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA), who harshly criticized Roy Blunt and the House GOP leadership for their failure to reform health care during the Bush years, and their refusal to address the subject seriously now. From The Hill:
House GOP leaders are too interested in playing "political games" to score attention, one Republican congressman said this weekend.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) took shots at his own party's leaders in the House currently, and blasted fellow Republicans for having failed to have reform healthcare during the first six years of the Bush administration, when Republicans held Congress and the White House...
"The Republican leadership in the House right now is constantly trying to play a political game every day to try and get a headline, and I don't think that's going to take us anywhere," he added...
"The American people rightfully think the Republicans are just complaining, because we had power -- we had both houses of Congress and we had the presidency," Rohrabacher explained. "What did we do with it? All of these changes that we could make to have improved our healthcare system we didn't do during the Bush years when we had both houses in Congress."
Seriously: why can't Blunt and his fellow leaders put forward the proposals Blunt guaranteed would be cheaper and better for Americans? Or are we not supposed to believe any of his commitments?
