Gingrich Walks Back Support For Poll Tests Just A Day After Reiterating Support For Them

By Travis Waldron

Former GOP House Speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich walked back his support for poll tests Friday, just a day afterreiterating support for making young Americans pass an American history test in order to gain voting rights.

In a brief interview at a campaign stop, ThinkProgress asked Gingrich about his comments the day before when he said, “it wouldn’t be bad to have a test for young Americans before they can vote.” Gingrich told us that he blamed the American education system for failing to teach American history, but he seemed to walk back his earlier support for poll tests, saying we don’t need to create a test for young people:

WALDRON: In order to vote, like a generic history test for new citizens and young people? Can you just kind of describe how that would work?

GINGRICH: You do have a test now for new citizens. I’m just making the point, not that we ought to create a test for young people, but that every young person who graduates from school ought to know American history, and all too often now adays the schools don’t teach you anymore.

WALDRON: So the problem’s more with the education system as opposed to –

GINGRICH: Yes, it’s the education system. The principle is that everybody should know, — every American should know American history because that’s what defines us as a country.

Watch it:

Gingrich first floated the idea of testing American citizens before they could vote last week and reiterated his support at a town hall in Marshalltown, IA, Thursday. His clarification Friday doesn’t seem to reflect the support he gave the idea just 24 hours earlier when speaking to a crowd at another campaign event.

Testing voters at the polls has a unique place in American history, as it was one of the main tactics employed to prevent blacks from voting until the passage of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts. As ThinkProgress reported, Florida Congressman Allen West (R)dismissed Gingrich’s suggestions, saying poll tests were something “my parents had to deal with.”

As for Gingrich, poll tests is just the latest in a list of policies the candidate has changed his mind about, joining cap and trade, the individual mandate, American intervention in Libya, and the Ryan Medicare plan, to name a few.

After panning ‘radical’ GOP Medicare plan, Gingrich says he’d vote for it

By Sahil Kapur

WASHINGTON – In the span of three days, he went from lambasting the GOP Medicare privatization plan as too radical to endorsing it and declaring his full support.

"I would have voted for the budget," former Republican House speaker and presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich told Media Matters in a video captured Tuesday night at an event in Minnesota. Would he vote for it today? "Sure," he said. "[Ryan]'s a very good friend of mine. And I think he's doing a brilliant job."

The remarks came hours after Gingrich personally called and apologized to Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House-approved blueprint, for deriding it as "right-wing social engineering" on Sunday.

Gingrich's transformation didn't happen on its own. It came amid a vicious tongue-lashing from conservatives. The 2012 candidate felt the wrath of the Republican establishment like none other after declaring on NBC's Meet The Press that the proposal would "impose" "radical change" on Americans.

"With allies like that, who needs the left?" Ryan responded, as other conservatives tagged it as the implosion of Gingrich's 2012 ambitions.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, who previously hailed Gingrich as a bastion of big ideas, declared that "he's done," and "it's over." Talk show host Bill Bennett had him on as a guest and tore into him. Across the web, conservatives who seldom lay a glove on the ex-speaker were furious. An Iowa voter even walked up to him and called him an "embarrassment to our party."

The apology and 180 degree flip came after Gingrich tried and failed to claim his remarks were simply overblown and taken out of context. "I used language that was too strong, although the underlying principle, I think, was right," he said Monday, before singing a different tune the next day.

Democrats have hardly contained their glee. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer tweeted: "Biggest takeaway from the Gingrich flap - ending Medicare as we know it is the new GOP litmus test."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out an email to supporters declaring that it's "clear" that the GOP plan is "too extreme when even Newt Gingrich think it's radical."

Gingrich, for his part, offered a disclaimer Tuesday night on Fox News: "Any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood."