Show Notes
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich does not think much of the political left. “They don’t want to make America great again. That’s the exact opposite of where the left’s head is,” he tells Peter Schweizer. “They want to drown America with illegal immigrants. They want to shrink America inside international organizations. They want to eliminate American history, and they want to raise a generation that despises its own country.”
Turning to the right, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich understands the problem faced by his successors, including Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Ky). Today’s grandstanding members focus more on their personal “brand” and fundraise by complaining than on trying to get things accomplished.
“I ended my career (in 1999) because about 18 members decided that they didn’t like the way I did things. They were unhappy we weren’t getting enough done, although we had balanced the budget for four straight years. But somehow that wasn’t conservative enough. And so, they just said flatly they wouldn’t vote for me.”
Infighting among conservatives is one big reason for today’s lack of results from the House of Representatives. “The Freedom Caucus spends half its time tearing up its own side. It’s like having an offensive tackle who tackles his own quarterback,” he told Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers on the most recent episode of The Drill Down.
Schweizer likened it to Republicans being the Alamo and Democrats the Mexican army, except that the Alamo’s defenders are fighting each other.
A related issue is caused by members of Congress who spend their time trying to build their own personal brand (and political fundraising) rather than accomplish legislative victories for conservative policies. [rep?] Even so, Gingrich still believes Republicans are “a party of people who really want to change Washington. But the level of frustration is enormous, because Washington has grown enormously powerful and capable of protecting itself. And by Washington, I mean not just the bureaucracy or the Democrats, but the news media, the interest groups, the lobbyists. The total weight of the left is a huge, huge challenge.”
Is nominating Donald Trump the answer?
“Let’s say he becomes the nominee, and he wins a big election and we pick up the Senate and we expand our margin in the House. The question then is, are you prepared for the next two years to take on the left, which is going to go crazy? They will see this as Armageddon. In their world, this will be literally life and death. And they will do anything they have to try to stop a new Trump administration,” he said.
Gingrich’s most recent book, Defeating Big Government Socialism, offers thoughts on what the next administration might do. But with Peter and Eric he stresses that the task before Republicans, whomever becomes their nominee, is designing a campaign that will get support for the level of change necessary. He believes that people are being driven out of the Democratic party in large numbers because of its takeover by its most left-wing members and interest groups. Meanwhile, Gingrich believes Trump to be “the most effective anti-left politician of my lifetime, including Ronald Reagan.”
“What Trump has done is begin to rebuild, ironically, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt coalition by bringing in people of all backgrounds. He’s now doing particularly well with Latinos. He’s doing better and better with Asian Americans. He is starting to penetrate particularly with African American males. He’s doing very, very well with the working blue collar whites,” he noted.
“You could see it in Iowa. I mean, where did Nikki Haley have any hope at all? The areas around the University of Iowa and Iowa State,” he said. “As long as there were college professors and had lots and lots of people who had gone to school long enough to be truly stupid, then Haley did fine,” he cracked.