Newt Gingrich on Where Republicans Went Wrong--and What Comes Next

0:01Everyone wants healthcare to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast-tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval, so more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals, so they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start. Learn more at uhg.com slash access. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. Congress is back in Washington for a lame duck session as a bruised and fleeting Republican majority continues to deal with the fallout of that midterm thumping.

0:46A week out, what big lessons are shaping up for the GOP? What should they be focusing on now? And what does all this mean for the 2028 presidential contest? Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, and I am delighted to have joining me this week a guy who has seen all of this before, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has a new book out that is an uplifting tonic for your political depression entitled America's Golden Age, Trumpism and an Era of Limitless Possibilities. Newt, how are you? I'm having a ball and delighted to be back with you. I want to get to the book and this era of limitless possibilities.

1:24I think we could all use some good news at the moment. But if you are a Republican right now, things are not looking so uplifting or happy. We're about a week out from the election now. A lot of dust still has to settle. But give me your analysis of what went wrong for Republicans on Tuesday. Well, we failed to deliver. I don't think it's a complicated election. I said back in May, tell me the price of gasoline on Labor Day. and I'll tell you the election. I think the average American went out and looked around and said they weren't happy with the cost of living. They weren't happy that the war, you know, they would tolerate the war if it was serious and we won it.

2:09But they don't understand why we're sort of rope-a-doping. So that makes them unhappy. They see things going on in Washington that they just plain don't like. The degree to which corruption has become an issue, I think is very serious and people don't have to really look at it. So you have a lot of different things. I'd spend a lot of my time on healthcare. And when you talk about affordability, the average family of four is buying a small car every year in health insurance. That's how much they're paying. Well, think about how much that crowds out everything else they'd like to be So I would say this was a performance election.

2:49And frankly, I was very surprised at how good the Democrats were at basically dropping all the ideology and overwhelmingly focusing on performance and saying, I'm worried about health care. I'm worried about the cost of living, et cetera. And I think that that had a big impact. You just mentioned this, and I've seen that you wrote about this online as well, too. You wrote that, you know, Americans are angrier about their own pocketbooks than they were about socialism and Islam. And that, to me, is a perfect summary. Republicans ran this campaign saying, hey, don't elect them. They're scary. But to me, what Americans said were, well, OK, but why are we electing you?

3:33Look at my prices. Also, what do you even plan to do next? Right. Yeah, and I'll give you my two favorite summaries of how screwed up the Republicans were, was Ramaswamy running a commercial with the mother of the Democratic nominee, attacking her daughter. It was so grotesque, so insensitive, and so repulsive that you had to wonder what kind of consultants came up with stuff like this. And then the other was, although the election is not quite finished yet, but my guess is that she will be the former senator from Mississippi, who was lecturing Mississippians on less expensive ways to get protein, which I translated into tofu.

4:24And I thought to myself, can you imagine going into an everyday gathering in Mississippi and saying you don't really need steak when you can have tofu. I mean, let them eat cake. It was this total inability to recognize where the country was. Lincoln once said, with popular sentiment, nothing can fail. Without popular sentiment, nothing can succeed. And Republicans forgot that. People don't give you power. People loan you power. And if you don't do your job right, they take it back. You brought up the Iran war. Obviously, the vice president came out with his own analysis of what went wrong right after the election.

5:12I think the very next day, he kind of threw the president under the bus with this long post saying, you know, I've now spoken to the supposedly smartest people in the universe. I'm not going to tell you who they are. And they say, obviously, the problem was entirely the war in Iran, our relationship with Israel. And he kind of threw in affordability there, too. I gather that you probably do not agree with that analysis. Well, let me say it this way. We need a national debate on to what degree we're prepared to lose one or more cities. Frankly, when you look at polling, when asked the question, should the Iranians be allowed to keep nuclear weapons, 85 percent of the American people say no.

5:54However, the president never made the case and then didn't prosecute the war. So what you have is noise and bombing and the president saying randomly, well, I may do it, I may not do it. You can't handle life and death like that. And so people just got fed up. And there's no question that the combination of the very intelligent Ukrainian campaign against the Russian petrochemical industry and the effort by the Iranians on the Straits of Ramuz drove up the price of oil. And therefore, I would argue, for example, in Maine, that Susan Collins' greatest opponent was the price of heating fuel. that people in Maine are just now filling up their tanks for the winter.

6:43And there's the highest price for heating oil, I think, in history. And so they're looking at that and they're thinking, tell me again why I should put up with this. And in that sense, the war mattered. And we're still in the same place, by the way. I mean, are we going to surrender, allow the Iranians to keep their nuclear weapons and allow them to become bigger, richer, more powerful and build missiles that can reach the U.S.? And if we're not going to do that, then what do the Democrats think the answer is? Yeah, my own view on this was, yeah, Iran obviously, and the prices coming from Iran obviously were an issue in this election, but not because we took bold action, but because it just dragged on and there seemed no obvious path for winding it down.

7:28And what was interesting to me about that vice president's post is that while that did happen, And in part, it was because in the spring, Vance himself argued for a ceasefire and talks. We had been crippling the country at that point. But that memorandum of understanding built a lot of false expectations that Iran was on the cusp of bowing down. And every time I think the president planned to resume operations, that false hope was raised again. I don't know your thoughts on that. No, I think the team that the president had negotiating never understood that this is a regime religiously inspired, which for 50 years has been chanting death to America.

8:09Now, as a historian, I want to reassure you that mass organizations that chant death to America for half century probably mean death to America. And I tried to convince the president at one point to do a city tour and basically say this is about the survival of Chicago. It's about the survival of Boston. It's about the survival of Austin. I mean, the danger we're in if the Iranians get nuclear weapons and missiles is beyond imagining because they will use them. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. everyone wants health care to be simpler and easier that's why united health group is fast tracking more than 60 percent of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval so more kids get the care they need when they need it and speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities and that's just the start learn more at uhg.com access This is Matthew Hennessey, the editor of Free Expression.

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10:06Welcome back to All Things with Kim Strassel. I am here this week with Newt Gingrich. How should the president handle Democrats now? I mean, you operated in Washington in a time when some big things got done, and that was in part because Republicans did, to a certain extent, work with Bill Clinton on some big issues. I think you think now that one of the lessons from this defeat of Republicans was that the American people are saying, we would like some leaders who can get some things done to make our lives better. One, do you think Democrats are actually willing to do that? Or is this just going to be hatred of Trump, the bonfire of investigations?

10:48And if they do reach out, where should the president work with them and where not? Well, Steve Moore had a pretty good idea, which is suspend all the federal gas taxes and challenge the Democrats. As you know, Democrats actually favor higher prices of gasoline, although they campaign against the current price. But what exactly would Hakeem do and would Chuck do if all of a sudden the president said, I'm going to lower the price of gasoline dramatically? Of course, the first reaction would be, well, Congress has to vote on. The president would say, terrific. How many Democrats are with me in lowering the price of gasoline?

11:23So my advice to the president would be to understand that you're in a schizophrenic situation, or if you will, since he and I are both twins in terms of the astrological or Gemini. You have two twins. One, there's some things you're going to fight on, period, unavoidable. Two, you should pick things the American people really want, and you should offer to collaborate on those things and let the Democrats turn down the American people. But I would build those two steps. I just wrote a piece that I think we're going to release tomorrow that Stephen Miller, if you think you're going to go to the mattresses to use the language of the godfather, then Stephen Miller is the perfect conciliate.

12:11He's tough. He's smart. He understands Trump. He understands the Congress. He used to work in the Senate. And I think the president is reacting to the language he's getting from Schumer and from Jeffries. Then fine, if they want to deal head on with somebody who is as tough or tougher than they are, then Stephen Miller is the right person for the president to send. So you also wrote online as an analysis after this that, you know, one of the big consequences here is that the 2028 presidential contest, at least on the Republican side, is wide open. And this certainly, if Republicans had had a decent night, not to even say a good night, I think the case, obviously, for Vance, as Veep, would just be beyond arguing with in a certain way.

13:00But it didn't turn out that way. And you certainly hear, you can feel out among Republicans, in particular, this kind of growing call for some other name to come in. This is interesting to me because you are a student of history. That rarely happens in presidential contests. The decks are usually a bit stacked for the vice president, especially if he throws in his name. Do you think it's going to be any different this time? Do you see the dynamics of this in a different way? Yeah, I think you put your finger on it. If they'd had a reasonably decent night, then you'd have to say that Vice President advance is the prohibited favorite.

13:37He is certainly, you know, he's been standing next to the president. He went out and raised money all year, presumably as the beginnings of a nationwide operation. But because the defeat was so stunning, I mean, when you lose every single statewide official in Texas, I mean, if that doesn't stun you, I think you're no longer capable of being stunned. So what it has done is it has made it legitimate to question how things have been going and what should our policies be for the future. And it's made quite clear that at the present time, our customers, who are the American people, aren't happy. And we better have a dialogue about what our customers want and what we are prepared to do to make them dramatically happier.

14:29I think that opens a big opportunity for many people. The name I hear the most often is Marco Rubio, who I can tell you from a European perspective, the difference in style and ability to say equally tough things, but in a way that people actually aren't offended, that Rubio has a huge opportunity. But I think you're going to see, certainly Ted Cruz has been like crazy for everybody. I think you're going to have a former governor of Georgia, former governor of Florida. I mean, I just did a piece on this at English 360. And I said, I listed sort of our bench. And there are a lot of people who are potentially capable of running for president.

15:18And I would not be at all surprised to see 10 or 12 or 14 people in the race by late this fall. Okay, well, buckle up. We're going to take one more break. When we come back, Newt's book and the golden age of America. Everyone wants healthcare to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval. So more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start.

16:00Learn more at uhg.com slash access.

16:07From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. Let's talk about your book. And I love the premise of your book because what you do in this, America's golden age. You look forward 50 years out. So to our 300th anniversary, 2076, a year I will not reach, but it's wonderful to think about it. And you argue that because of the confluence of a lot of innovation, also Trump's presidency and some of his policies, that the U.S. is on the cusp of an unprecedented era of prosperity. You talk a little bit about what's coming, specifically new world of marriage of artificial intelligence and robotics, new types of energy production, biological breakthroughs, space travel.

16:57And all of this, you say, is going to create this surging economic growth and ensure America remains a global center of tech and innovation. But you also say that this isn't guaranteed, that we could mess it up. So explain that. Well, many years ago, Henry Kissinger gave me the opportunity to come out to his farm and spend the weekend with Lee Kuan Yew, the great senior minister. And on a Saturday morning over coffee, I said to the minister, I was fascinated that so many of his decisions were right. And how had he learned this? And he said, you know, I was a graduate student in Britain in the late 40s when Clement Attlee and the socialists were nationalizing everything.

17:40And every time I came to a major decision, I asked myself, what would Attlee do? And I would then do the opposite. And it worked every time. So I would say if I thought that, and I'm fascinated watching the Democrats right now because so many of them were moving to the center. I mean, you may have seen even Tallarico has talked about he wants to work with Trump. If the Democrats managed to screw up the whole country the way they screwed up the worst of the blue states, then it'll be harder, we'll still get there because the underlying momentum of science and technology is so enormous. The person who, by the way, really understood this the best is Selina Zita, who has written several brilliant articles about the 1870 to 1896 period and comparing the turmoil and the confusion with where we are.

18:38I think she exactly nails it. We are going to go through, unless you had a government as maniacally stupid as the Perones were in Argentina, we're going to go through a scale of change. I wasn't totally kidding about living. We work with a longevity team, and they believe that the average 20-year-old today, the average, will live to be 115 and will have the vitality of a 60-year-old. Amazing. I'm involved in a project right now to try to figure out how we eliminate Alzheimer's. Because if you eliminate Alzheimer's, both the quality of life and the amount of money you save are so breathtaking, and it's such a big disease.

19:20So you start looking at these things in space, not 50 years from now, but this year and next year, Elon Musk's Star Show is going to be launching 100 people or 200 tons of cargo on every launch, and it's a reusable rocket. And his goal is by late N28 to be doing one a day. Now, what does that mean? Well, his calculation, which may be a little exaggerated, is that 98 % of all the weight put into orbit in 2028 will be SpaceX. All the rest, China, India, Russia, Japan, Boeing, Lockheed, all the rest will be two or three percent. And what does he that going to do it it's i mean i wanted to write the book in part to say to young people you should study you should learn you have an amazing future if you're 15 or 20 today it's not at all unrealistic to think that you could be an asteroid miner by the time you're 50 that's crazy or you could you could be part of the first the first village on the moon i and i talk a fair amount with the NASA administrator, who's a remarkable human being.

20:35His hope is that we'll have our first village, not three scientists huddled down, our first village around 2033 and the first village on Mars around 2040. Well, you talk a lot in this book about these optimistic, I mean, really just mind-blowing potential that's out there. You also note, though, that to kind of get there, we also have to break the cycle of pessimism that we are in, in this country in the moment. And I really wanted to ask you in that kind of finish out on this one big source of that we saw play out last week. And I know this, I go and I talk to Americans around the country. They're not just frustrated with the cost of living, but they're very frustrated with a Washington DC that they view as at this point, at least in Congress, completely dysfunctional.

21:24Right. And so you talk about advancements, but Americans are also worried about these problems that aren't getting fixed, like$40 trillion in debt and entitlements that no one seems to have any courage to tackle. So how does that change and how important is that to breaking the cycle of pessimism? Well, I can say this, as you know, I'm the only Speaker of the House to author four consecutive balanced budgets in the last hundred years. And I did a working with Bill Clinton. We met 35 days face to face working it out. It was an amazing experience. First of all, you have to set the goals. Now, it's going to be interesting because remember, the Democrats now have a big enough majority in the Senate and a big enough majority in the House that they can't hide behind dysfunction.

22:11So they're going to have a real pressure to deliver. Now, they may deliver things so far to the left that it's easy to veto them, or they may decide because they've got to be thinking about the presidency. If you want to elect a Democrat president in 28, you have to prove that the Democrats can be reasonable enough to govern. And so we may be surprised by February or March that the natural behavior is not quite as uniformly hostile as people thought. But I would say two things that seem contradictory. First, the founding fathers designed the system so that no dictator could force it to work. And they designed it to be so dispersed in power that we can barely get it to work voluntarily.

22:58I mean, that's by design. And I have said, by the way, even though it was my party that lost, I was delighted that money couldn't buy the election. I thought it was a very healthy sign that the American people thought those are really stupid ads and I don't care. And, you know, what people said at lunch around the table to each other was vastly more important than the ad that was on in the background. The second thing I would say is you have to pick a few things to do. Now, the things we picked were very big, welfare reform, balancing the budget, FDA reform. But we understood that. And I think whether the Democrats want to steal the contract with America concept or in some other format, both they and the Republicans, again, in the Lincoln tradition, should start with the American people, figure out what the American people will support and are for.

23:56and then build five or six big reforms. I mean, don't go for more than 10 and five or six may be the most you can carry. And be willing to sit down face to face and work it out. I mean, require one more election cycle and we'll have to wait and see. I mean, if the Democrats are too far to the left and too destructive, they'll lose in 28. But the bias right now, I would say, has to be in favor of the Democrats. You know, Donald Trump will have been around for 13 years by the time we get to the 28th election. And they may be thinking, let's try a non-Republican just out of exhaustion. Or the Republicans may find the right person to articulate a positive problem-solving populism, very different from the European disaster, which is what we did with the contract, is what Reagan did.

24:51I mean, Reagan was a very positive appeal to populism, but in a positive way that allowed us to move forward. Well, Newt Gingrich, this is all great insight and great advice. I'm also going to cling to your optimism that you're putting out there about all the great things that are still in store for the country. We want to thank you for coming on. We'd also like to thank our listeners. We are here every week. And if you like the show, please do hit the subscribe button. And you can also write to us at atkim at wsj.com.

25:31Everyone wants healthcare to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast-tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval. So more kids get the care they need when they need it. and speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start. Learn more at uhg.com slash access.