Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got real with Republicans this week during a post-mortem on the party’s less-than-stellar performance during this year’s midterm election cycle.
Gingrich, a former Georgia Republican, gave his assessment during a Wednesday morning appearance with Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo.
“There were races we thought we were going to win that we didn’t, and there were people we didn’t think we’d lose that we did. I think for Republicans, this may be as big a time to reassess and look at things as it is for Democrats,” Gingrich began.
“Ron DeSantis got a huge boost and he is much more likely to run for president now. President Trump has to be looking at some of this and thinking about it because he worked very hard. He led a huge rally in Miami with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott two nights before the election, so he can take some credit,” he added.
“But I think DeSantis is probably the biggest single winner of the night. That means he will be, for everybody who doesn’t want Trump, Ron DeSantis will now become far and away the leading alternative and the superstar,” he explained.
“Somebody said to me this morning that [DeSantis] just gets things done,” the former Speaker noted. “I have to confess, I was up most of the evening with Kevin McCarthy looking at the data, talking to the analysts. There were a number of places where we thought we would do better than we did.”
“The Democratic message of fear worked far better than I thought it would, that is part of it. I think it is a despicable message from the president of the United States and I think Biden is the most divisive president in American history, but he and his staff have to be saying that all of those nasty speeches, all of those vicious attacks on Republicans, it worked,” he said.
“Honest Republicans have to stop, take a deep breath, look at the results and analyze them. We don’t know enough this morning to know exactly what happened. We had a lot of candidates who came very close, including some incumbents who lost by very narrow margins,” Gingrich said.
“That requires some rethinking on a lot of stuff, both the campaign consulting business, the polling business, and if some of the messages work. You have to admit that what the Democrats did work, they ran a very effective campaign of fear,” he concluded.