Gingrich: “In the real world we were kidding ourselves”
“In the real world we were kidding ourselves”
Newt Gingrich talks to Salon about why he and his party were so wrong about the election and the future of the GOP
BY STEVE KORNACKI
There was a popular theory for much of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign that Newt Gingrich wasn’t actually running for the GOP nomination – that he was instead leveraging the stature and visibility that comes with being a candidate to market his personal brand. Whether by brilliant design or complete accident, though, the former House Speaker managed to catch fire – twice – delivering a memorable blow to Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary before falling apart in Florida and fading from contention.
That rise-fall-rise-fall cycle neatly reflects the role Gingrich plays in national politics. He has an enduring knack for attracting attention and making himself relevant to the political conversation of the moment, even if most opinion-shapers in his party ultimately aren’t comfortable with him being their public face. So it’s no surprise that even as he nears 70, Gingrich is a vocal participant in the debate over the Republican Party’s direction, one who’s made news recently by taking shots at Stuart Stevens, the architect of Mitt Romney’s ’12 campaign, and Karl Rove.
He entered the fray shortly after the election with a memo to GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, describing himself as blindsided by the November result and “shaken” that he and so many other Republicans had misread the state of play so badly. He outlined 25 principles for a “deep, bold, thorough and lengthy” reform process within the party. Among the points of emphasis: the need to compete for non-white voters and to stop writing off urban areas. More recently, he pointed the finger at Romney and his strategists for worsening the party’s plight with Latinos by running far to the right on immigration during last year’s primary (a tactic that helped Romney derail Gingrich, who had struck a more inclusive tone on the issue).
Salon spoke with Gingrich about where the Republican Party is and where it’s going. The transcript of the conversation, slightly edited and condensed for clarity, is below.
more:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/03/in_the_real_world_we_were_kidding_ourselves/
