Fact Check: Newt Gingrich And Rick Santorum Endorsed RomneyCare

During CNN's Florida Republican GOP debate, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum attacked Mitt Romney over his health care plan. However, both candidates supported RomneyCare before they were against it. 

Newt Gingrich & RomneyCare

USA Today fact checked Newt's claim during the CNN debate that that he never endorsed RomneyCare and found out that Gingrich's claim is FALSE:

Former House speaker Gingrich claimed he had never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance — only a state requirement.

Gingrich: I didn't advocate federal mandates. I talked about it at a state level …

Not true. Gingrich said "Congress" must require high-income persons to have insurance, not state legislatures. He did so explicitly in a 2007 opinion piece:

Gingrich, June 25, 2007: In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more, including passing legislation to [among other things] require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.

His support for a federal mandate is of long standing. In 1993, on NBC's Meet the Press, he said:

Gingrich, 1993: I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.

Gingrich was proposing an individual mandate as an alternative to the Clinton administration's ill-fated health care plan, which was centered on an employer mandate, requiring businesses to provide insurance for their workers. And he held to a similar position as recently as last May, also on Meet the Press:

Gingrich, May 15, 2011: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care. And, and I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond … or in some way you indicate you're going to be held accountable.

NBC's David Gregory: But that is the individual mandate, is it not?

Gingrich: It's a variation on it.

If Gingrich was thinking about a state-only mandate, he never said so at the time. And he clearly said "all of us" would be subject to his "variant" of the mandate just last May. We judge that Gingrich is falsifying his own history on this matter.

Rick Santorum, Individual Mandate & RomneyCare

During the CNN debate, Rick Santorum went after both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for supporting the RomneyCare and individual mandate. The New Republican found that Rick Santorum is being dishonest in his attacks since he supported the individual mandate: 

PolitiFact verified several days ago that Santorum's claim that Gingrich has supported some version of the mandate for 20 years was "mostly true." But it didn't think to ask whether Santorum, too, has supported the individual mandate in the past. And as it happens, he has. He supported it in 1994, according to this April 7, 1994 article in the Allentown, Pa. Morning Call, and this May 2, 1994 article in the same newspaper. It's possible that the newspaper would have gotten this wrong once, but in the heat of a primary campaign it's highly unlikely Santorum's campaign would have allowed it to get this wrong twice. 

Moreover, Rick Santorum has flipped flopped on RomneyCare. He endorsed Mitt Romney during the 2008 Presidential elections yet Santorum had issues with it now:  

“I feel we need someone who is a strong, principled conservative who believes not in government mandates, not in government control of the health care system, but in a patient-centered approach to health care,” Santorum said.

Santorum added that both the state and federal laws "tend to drive employers out of the private sector plans because they’re expensive and more people end up on the government plan."

“Ultimately, it’s a failure," Santorum said.

Apparently, the phrase, "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" has no meaning to Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich. They can't hide from their past and are hoping voters won't notice the glass shattering every time they try to attack the individual mandate or RomneyCare. But the voters do notice it. 

These two men also don't realize why Mitt Romney is bullet proof when it comes to attacks on RomneyCare. They'e in no position to be throwing blows at Romney since they've both supported the individual mandate and RomneyCare. As as result, every time they attack Mitt, they get weaker and weaker while Mitt Romney gets stronger and stronger.