ORLANDO, Florida — The Republican Party should “absolutely” look to Florida as a model ahead of the 2022 elections, Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) said during an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Friday.
Appearing at CPAC, Steube pointed to the America First policies touted by former President Trump, which proved to be popular even among non-traditional Republican voters.
“So I hope we’re going to focus on those America First policies and concentrate on that going into 2022. We only have to take five House seats back to take the majority in Congress. You don’t hear anybody in the mainstream media talking about that, because that doesn’t affect their purpose and their liberal ideology, but five seats is not a lot of seats,” he said, noting that redistricting will likely bode well for the GOP.
“We’ve got redistricting here in Florida. With the census data, Florida is probably going to pick up one or two seats by population. Texas is going to pick up a seat. I think maps are going to be drawn in a way that could be helpful to us. So I’m focused on winning the House back in 2022,” Steube said, expressing confidence that the Republican caucus in the House also remains focused on that objective.
“You obviously have people with different ideologies. You obviously have different people in the party with their opinions of the president, but I’ll tell you in Florida and in my district, the president is widely supported,” he said, citing a survey conducted in his district following the January 6 Capitol Riot. The survey, he said, showed 81 percent in his district expressing the belief that Trump should not be impeached. Trump also garnered a 71 percent approval rating, the Florida congressman added.
Florida, which went red in the 2020 presidential election, “absolutely” serves as a model for Republicans,who hope to take the House in the 2022 midterm elections. Steube noted that he served in the statehouse for several years, where they cut taxes and regulations and enacted policies later embraced by Trump.
All people have to do, he said, is look at the numbers in Florida with the policies they put in place in the last 8-10 years.
“Look how beneficial and how prosperous Florida is right now – not just from an economic standpoint, but people are flooding here because of policies we have in place and coming from those blues states because they’re sick and tired of mask mandates. They’re sick and tired of their businesses being shut down, and they want to live their lives and the constitutional freedoms that we enjoy as Americans, and they can’t do that in Democratic states,” he said.
Steube said it is crucial for Republicans to continue to embrace America First policies, such as bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and putting pressure on the Chinese Community Party.
“And the Biden administration isn’t going to do that,” Steube said. “And so it’s going to be very easy to draw lines between what we would do and the policies that we support and the policies that the left supports.”