Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he is "appalled" by the way the Republican Party has attempted to derail the Affordable Care Act.
In an interview with Politico published Monday, Gingrich said his party had failed in its approach to taking down President Barack Obama's signature health care law.
"The more we dig into it, I'm sort of appalled that the Republican Party.. didn't explain more carefully the things we already know about Obamacare, when we could've kept the president on defense the whole fall campaign," Gingrich said. “I think we didn't do our job as an opposition party and the press didn't do its job."
Gingrich, who campaigned against Obamacare during his failed run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, pointed to the highly-publicized problems with the law's rollout as one area the Republican Party should focus on.
The former House Speaker joins a chorus of Republican leaders who have taken on the party's anti-Obamacare tactics.
During the government shutdown last month, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the Republican approach a "fool's errand."
“We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare," McCain said on CNN.
Last week, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who also vied for the GOP nomination in 2012, said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) "did more harm" than good by tying anti-Obamacare provisions to the government funding bill.
"I think he didn't do a very good job in pointing [his objective] out," Santorum said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's one thing to have a goal, and another thing to have a plan to get you to that goal, and he didn't figure that out."
Before You Go
