Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is offering a dire warning to Republicans as they take control of the House in January and prepare for another fight over the White House in 2024: Don’t underestimate President Joe Biden.
Gingrich, who was elevated to his position as speaker amid a GOP revolution in 1994, gave the warning in a column he wrote on his website, telling Republicans that if they wish to win back the White House and full control of Congress, they must learn from their mistakes in 2020 and 2022. That includes no longer underestimating Biden — otherwise, they risk him continuing to advance his agenda.
“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,” the former speaker wrote. “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.”
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The Georgia Republican clarified he did not agree with Biden’s policies nor does he approve of his job performance. However, this burning dislike among the GOP has hindered the party from spreading its influence within the halls of Congress, he said.
Gingrich compared Biden’s policy wins so far to former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who both preferred to be underestimated by their opponents so they could achieve their agenda goals while critics focused on less important topics. Biden has managed a similar kind of achievement, he wrote.
“The Biden team took an amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the U.S. House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate and turned it into trillions of dollars in spending — and a series of radical bills. The latest bill on sexual rights overriding all other rights was bitterly opposed by virtually every conservative even as it passed with Republican support,” he said. “The Biden team had one of the best first term off-year elections in history. They were not repudiated. They did not have to pay for their terrible mismanagement of the economy.”
Moving forward, Republicans must reform their election strategy, Gingrich argued.
The former House speaker’s warnings come as Republicans have been at odds over what, or who, is to blame for their lackluster performance in the midterm elections, especially as the party was initially predicted to gain control of both the House and the Senate. However, the party only managed to gain a slim majority in the House and a chance to hold a 50-50 tie in the upper chamber.
Some Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), suggested Republican losses were due to candidates being “crushed by independent voters,” referring to warnings he made earlier in the midterm cycle about “candidate quality” that could sink GOP chances. Those warnings were directed toward Republican nominees who were endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
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Others, such as Sen. Rick Scott, pointed to the party’s failure to craft universal messaging, with party leaders openly feuding over midterm strategy throughout the campaign cycle.
While McConnell wanted the midterm elections to act as a referendum on President Joe Biden and his administration, Scott also wanted to present a unified agenda that laid out what the GOP would do in the next Congress. Tensions also rose after Scott predicted earlier in the summer that Republicans had a pathway to a 55-seat majority, criticizing McConnell, who later said the fight for the majority would be incredibly close.
