Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Tea Party favorite, slammed Newt Gingrich today as an “unreliable conservative” and a “convenient conservative.”
Speaking in a conference call with reporters arranged by the Romney campaign, Chaffetz, who has endorsed Romney, pointed to an audio clip from 2009 unearthed by Verum Serum this weekend that shows Gingrich supporting an individual mandate as a reason the former Speaker was less conservative than Romney.
“For all the rhetorical barbs, Speaker Gingrich has thrown at Gov. Romney, this certainly leads one to believe that he’s fairly hypocritical on this issue,” Chaffetz said. “He was advocating an individual mandate at the national level, something that Mitt Romney has never done.”
In the audio, Gingrich does say that those who are “absolute libertarian[s]” could “post a bond” instead of buying health insurance.