"Newt was critical to the passage of Medicare Part D"

“Newt was critical to the passage of Medicare Part D,” recalls John Feehery, who was Speaker Dennis Hastert’s chief spokesman at the time. The speech “was very powerful,” Feehery said.

Those who sat in the room that day say it was classic Newt — his best and worst all in the same moment. The bill’s backers applaud him for lending his imprimatur and intellectualism to a cause they say was well worth the effort, while critics believe he walked a number of conservative true believers into heresy: the Pied Piper of Part D.

While Republicans ended up favoring the bill 204-to-25, Gingrich’s role in giving it a final burst of momentum remains a sticking point primarily among conservatives of two varieties: those who recognized it at the time as an apostasy — an unpaid-for new entitlement without major reforms of Medicare — and those who followed Gingrich’s lead only to be disappointed by the outcome.

“His sales pitch, more than anything else, switched my vote and votes of others on a bill that still took most of the night to pass while the vote was held open,” former Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) recalled in a recent interview with POLITICO conducted via e-mail. “And Medicare is going broke faster than ever.”