Gingrich: It's Not About The Base

Newt Gingrich retired from government in 1999, but with his party in disarray, he's back to help sort through the GOP's conflicting opinions on how to rebuild. Gingrich, who now heads the conservative think tank American Solutions, has started talking to gain support for his own broad vision, which is to include more people by building new party ideas from the bottom, rather than the top. If done right, he thinks there's no reason the Republicans can't regain control of Congress as soon as 2010. NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift asked Gingrich what those new ideas might be, and where the party is headed. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Where does the party go from here?
Newt Gingrich: I think, first of all, the fact is that we have every probability of reviving pretty dramatically. I've lived through '64, '74 and '92. In '64 we were beaten so badly people talked about whether the party had a future. By '66, Lyndon Johnson had gone so far to the left and spilt the Democratic Party and we gained 47 House seats and picked up a bunch of governorships and Senate seats. Since 1968 you have not elected an overt liberal in 40 years. In '74 to '76, we had Watergate and a bad recession and then a Reagan-Ford nomination fight. In that period, only 17 percent of the country identified itself as Republican and yet four years later, Reagan won a smashing victory and Carter collapsed under a bad economy. In '92, Bush, having thrown away the fiscal conservatives by raising taxes, lost the three-way race and, two years later, we gained the House for the first time in 40 years and kept it. I know how fast the country can switch.

How do you instigate that switch?
The GOP has two key obligations. First to develop better solutions, not to become the opposition party, but the party that develops better solutions than the other team. Two, the Republican Party should think about being inclusive rather than outreach.

What's the difference?
The difference is when I make a decision, I call you to sell you on it. That's outreach. Inclusion is when I ask you to come to the meeting. You and I together think through a policy that you would like.

We seem to have come from a period when cultural ideas were dominant. But maybe with the state of the economy, it seems like maybe more hard ideas than soft ideas are needed.
I wouldn't call them soft or hard ideas. We want to find a way to offer dramatically better solutions. The key focus has to be the economy. But this is an administration that's going to drive all sorts of forces back together. They remind me of the worst of Carter and the worst of Clinton. In the sense that Carter totally mismanaged the economy, they are in the process of fundamentally mismanaging the economy. Having won the fight over the stimulus package, it's going to be very hard to argue that this isn't their economy.

But isn't it a little early to say they've mismanaged the economy.
Sure, but I'm giving you my take.

I see. The polls still show that Obama is quite popular and that his ideas have support.
First of all, 77 percent of the country is against giving any more money to GM. My guess is that 80 percent would be against an energy-tax increase. I don't know that I could agree with you that his proposals are so popular. And second, he is about as popular today as George W. Bush was at this stage in his presidency. And he's less popular than Jimmy Carter was in his presidency.

In terms of the political figures, who can help lead the party out of the wilderness. I presume you see a role for yourself. Anybody else out there?
Oh sure. I look at Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Mark Sanford, Tim Pawlenty, among governors. In the House, under John Boehner, there's a whole collection of people, starting with Eric Cantor ... Mike Pence ... and Pete Sessions. There are a lot of bright people who represent the future of the party.

On the Rove side, of course he talked about creating a permanent majority. Is there anyone like Karl Rove out there?
I don't know. The model we use is fundamentally different. We don't focus on base mobilization, we are for fundamentally working on how you reach out to the whole country and develop issues with the whole country.

Would you predict that the Republicans will take back the House. No, right?
Why not?

Because that seems like a lot of seats.
They [Republicans] are stronger today then they were in '94.

So 2010 becomes a referendum on Obama's stewardship of the economy?
Not just the economy. It is a referendum on a radical secularism. It is a referendum on an administration that is very left wing. It's a referendum on taking away your right to vote with a secret ballot by the labor union leaders. Ironically, Obama says he's not going to deal with lobbyists, but he sends a message to 100 union leaders. Who does they think they are? This will be a broad referendum on which America you want to live in. I am very comfortable 2010 is going to be a very good year for Republicans and that the choice is going to be between a huge plan, huge debt, huge government model and going back to the things that have historically worked for Americans. I have every reason to believe we will succeed in convincing people this is not the future they want.

So you're not wringing your hands.
No, I'm too busy developing new solutions.

I've got to ask you: Rush Limbaugh. Obviously, Democrats don't like him. Republicans are mixed. Conservatives give him high marks. Moderates do not. But according to NEWSWEEK's poll, Republicans are unified on whether he should be seen as a leader of the party. The answer was no, across the board. What's your take?
Look, if you read the Politico column this week where they describe the White House['s] deliberate decision to make Limbaugh the issue, it resembled the Nixon White House. And, frankly, as long as Rahm Emanuel is down there, he's the Haldeman of this administration. This was a totally Nixonian strategy. They can't defend signing a bill that has 8,000 earmarks, which fundamentally breaks the administration's word to the people. They can't defend an energy-tax increase. They can't defend the other things they have going. So they turn around and they say, "Lets pick a fight over Rush." Now, that's a tawdry repudiation of everything we were told the president was going to be like. It's not positive, it's not honest, it's not creative, it doesn't bring people together. And frankly I think the average American is smart enough to know that that's what it is.