OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich issued a brutal reality check to Republicans following the party’s underwhelming performance during a midterm election cycle in which they were predicted to pick up several more House seats than they did and flip a few Senate seats in their favor.
Specifically, the former GOP leader from Georgia chided his party for underestimating President Joe Biden and keeping their focus on issues that he believes were not top-of-mind for a majority of Americans.
In a column on his website, Gingrich used a football analogy when comparing the job that Biden has done halfway through his first term, adding that if more people did that, “you realize how well he is doing by his own definition of success.”
“Like most Americans, I do not approve of the job he is doing. Like virtually all conservatives and Republicans, I deeply oppose his policies. They are clearly weakening America and strengthening our enemies. And, again, like most Americans, I oppose the woke policies which are undermining and threatening to destroy popular, unique, shared American culture,” Gingrich wrote.
“However, conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms. He has only built upon and fortified the left-wing Big Government Socialist woke culture system,” he added.
Gingrich went on to say that while Biden largely “stayed in the basement” during the 2020 campaign, he still managed to win the White House.
After that, Democrats used an “amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the U.S. House and a 50–50 tie in the Senate” to push through key legislation, including trillions in new spending, while the most recent bill on “sexual rights overriding all other rights” passed with some GOP support.
Despite Biden’s poor handling of the economy and the significant increase in crimes along with the ongoing border crisis, his White House team and Democrats nevertheless executed a strategy of “polarizing Americans against Donald Trump supporters” to come out with one of the “best first-term off-year elections in history.”
He added:
We dislike Biden so much, we pettily focus on his speaking difficulties, sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory, and other personal flaws. Our aversion to him and his policies makes us underestimate him and the Democrats.
But remember: Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan both preferred to be underestimated. Both wanted people to think of them as pleasant – but not dangerous. They found being underestimated was a major asset. While people laughed at them, they were busy achieving their goals and getting their programs implemented.
Biden has achieved something similar.
Gingrich observed that the Biden administration and Democrats have turned the Jan. 6 riot a crisis that “eclipsed” the social chaos of leftist mobs while exaggerating abortion issues. “And it all worked,” as there was no red wave, as many anticipated.
Gingrich then repeated how Republicans need to rework their 2024 strategy and “almost inevitable second-time Democrat Presidential Nominee Biden.”
“This is a much bigger challenge than I would have guessed before the election,” he admitted.
During a January interview on Sunday Morning Futures, Gingrich told host Maria Bartiromo that he believed that a massive Red Wave was coming in November’s midterm elections.
He also predicted that some Democrats may face jail time for punishing their political opponents with investigations since they took over in 2020.
“All of these people who’ve been so tough and so mean and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every email because I think it’s clear these are people who just literally running over the law, pursuing innocent people, causing them to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees for no justification,” Gingrich said.
“And it’s basically a lynch mob, and unfortunately, the Attorney General of the United States has joined that lynch mob and is totally misusing the FBI. And I think when we have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down. And the wolves are going to find out that they are now sheep. And they are the ones who, in fact, I think are going to face a real risk of jail,” he added.
Republicans have won the House but failed to capture control of the Senate.
