Newt Gingrich Blasts Paul Ryan's 'Social Engineering' of Medicare

Staking out his own RINO preserve, GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich denounced the House Republican plan to privatize Medicare as too "radical."

Taking on Rep. Paul Ryan's effort to control entitlement spending, the former House speaker called it "too big a jump."

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

Alternatively, Gingrich has proposed a hybrid program that offers a voluntary privatized version of Medicare.

Gingrich, a Pennsylvanian-turned-Georgian who led a GOP takeover of the House in the 1990s, has a history of fine-tuning his personal and political positions -- from converting to Catholicism to going all in for massive federal ethanol subsidies (hello, Iowa!).