Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tells Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon that the GOP establishment “is denying reality,” but should instead “question their failure” and not “repudiate 70 percent of your own party.”
The American rebellion captured in the 2016 GOP presidential campaign, where outsiders Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Dr. Ben Carson are winning up to 70 percent of the vote represents the creative destruction of an ossified political process and “a wonderfully American moment,” Gingrich told Bannon, host of the Breitbart News Daily radio program on the Sirius-XM Patriot Channel Tuesday morning.
Bannon asked Gingrich if he thought his own political career had paved the way for Donald Trump and “this populist, nationalist movement.”
“Jim Pinkerton and Marc Rotterman have written a brilliant piece that talks about me as a precursor to Trump and it weaves together from Reagan to the Contract with America in 1994 to my [presidential] campaign to what we see now and I think there’s something that goes back to Goldwater and Reagan,” Gingrich answered, elaborating:
The country outside of Washington, at least on the center and the right, has been increasingly alienated. It’s alienated by political correctness, it’s alienated by big bureaucracies that don’t work, it’s alienated by trade policies that don’t seem to help us and now, of course, now national security policy that is just a disaster.
People look at that and say: ‘We don’t need to better manage the disaster. We need to kick over the table and start with some new fresh ideas.’ Trump and Cruz are the two guys offering to kick over the table. Carson offers it a little bit in terms of personal and moral authority that is very powerful.
I think the establishment is trying to… is denying reality. If you have, between Cruz, Carson, and Trump, you’re in the 65, 70 percent range. At that point it’s time for the establishment to question their failure, not repudiate the American voter. How do you repudiate 70 percent of your own party?
“What is the mentality that is rejecting 70 percent of the voters. Where does that mentality come from?” Bannon asked.
“I think it’s two different things, you just put your finger on,” Gingrich responded:
For some of the consultants, some of whom I think should be sued for malpractice, it’s just a way of making money. They want this fight to go on as long as possible because they’re going to make money at it.
For a lot of the really rich guys, they’re not used to being turned down.
They don’t go to their country club and get turned down. They don’t buy a yacht to be turned down. They are used to being CEOs. They sort of personify Trump in The Apprentice saying ‘you’re fired.’ They’re all saying, just like Trump in The Apprentice, they’re saying to the voters, “You’re fired!,” and the voters are staring at them like they’re nuts.
With the mentality of being very successful and very wealthy, you spend all day every day with people being nice to you, because you fire the ones who aren’t. The great joy of American democracy…we’re this remarkable balance between Jeffersonian politics and Hamiltonian economics. Hamilton wants us to be a big powerful country with rich people, and Jefferson wants to make sure all the average people can then vote to control the rich people.
It’s this wonderful balance.
“What you have right now is this absolutely American rebellion, something you don’t see in Europe, you don’t see in Japan. In America, every once in a while, the consumers revolt. McDonald’s replaces the local hamburger place. Walmart replaces Montgomery Wards,” Gingrich told Bannon.
“Schumpeter, [the famous economist] who created the term “creative destruction” would understand perfectly what’s going on right now,” Gingrich said, adding:
When you have a Veterans Administration which is both inefficient and corrupt, and which the Democratic Party has protected, with people like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton praise the corruption, because after all this is a public employees union, how could they not be for it?
When you have a school system like Detroit, where 92 percent of the children cannot read, cannot pass their reading tests, and yet it’s a 100 percent machine for paying to bureaucrats. And that’s the purpose of these big school systems, to pay the bureaucrats.
They’re not paying teachers, because they’re not teaching.
People are saying, look, you’ve got to do something better.
The phenomenon has been, and Ted Cruz is going to have a good day today in my judgment, that Trump comes along, and Trump is a genuine entrepreneurial, dynamic, larger than life figure, and he has swept the board in the sense that people say if you want to kick over this table, you know that Trump can do it. He’s going to have lots of collateral damage. The establishment properly focuses on …. oh my God, what if he ruins my lobbying practice?
As an historian and as a citizen, I think this is a wonderfully American moment, and I think Ted Cruz, in some ways, started the dance in 2013, Trump then entered the dance, Dr. Carson had the courage to be out there as a very remarkable non-political figure. For many Americans, he consistently gets 9 or 10 percent of the vote because for many Americans he is a symbol of honesty and integrity and decency. It’s nice to be able to see somebody who is doing well without in any way pandering to anyone.
Gingrich also offered his guesses of how the Super Tuesday primaries will turn out:
Remember, from an historic perspective I can always tell you afterwards what happened. So you ask me tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you how it worked.
My guess is that Trump is going to sweep probably 9 of the 13 states. Cruz is going to have a very good night in Texas. He probably won’t get enough to get 100 percent [of the delegates], but he and Trump will share the dominant vote in Texas, with Rubio probably being third.
I think that Cruz has a shot in Arkansas. He has a very realistic shot of coming in first in …. he and Rubio will come in first and second in Minnesota because it’s a caucus system and Trump hasn’t done much there. The only place where Trump comes in third.
Otherwise, it is mostly going to be a Trump evening.I think Cruz and Rubio both have a shot in Oklahoma.Then the rest of the states are all going to be Trump.
When Trump is at almost 50 percent in Massachusetts, when he’s sweeping Vermont, this is clearly a national cycle.
“So if it’s a national cycle, what is the establishment and their advisors going to tell themselves tomorrow morning in the cold light of dawn?” Bannon asked.
Gingrich said the establishment will respond by saying “that we have to double-down, triple-down, scream even louder, try to get down in the mud, hope we can drag Trump down.”
“Because, oh my God, what if he’s actually the nominee? Just because he has the most votes and the most delegates, why should we allow the American system to work when we want to throw a temper tantrum?” Gingrich concluded.
You can hear the full interview here: