Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich knows about getting the GOP to win big—after all, his efforts propelled the GOP to a historic victory in 1994. The GOP can have another historic victory in the upcoming midterm elections next year, he believes, and he has an idea of how they can do it.
In an interview with John Solomon, Gingrich explained that there are sixteen issues with overwhelming bipartisan support—85 percent approval or higher. “And at that number, you can talk about an American majority, not a conservative, not a Republican, but literally the American people with only a small left-wing fringe” as the exception.
One such issue is defunding the police. Americans overwhelming support the police—who have seen their support actually increase over the past year. While the radical left supports defunding the police, Republicans can campaign in support of police and it’ll be a winner for them.
There are other, more nuanced issues that the GOP can use to their advantage.
“We discovered, partly with Larry Kudlow’s help, he came up with the term free-market capitalism. And we then developed as a counterpoint, big government socialism,” Gingrinch explained. “And it turned out…you need all six words, capitalism versus socialism. Capitalism wins, but not by a decisive margin. But if it’s free-market capitalism versus big government socialism, it’s a 59 to 16 issue.”
If Republicans frame the issue of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill as “big government socialism” it will hurt Democrats in the House and Senate who have already voted for it.
“If everyone who is opposed to the $3.5 trillion bill uses the term Big Government Socialists, within a few weeks the 50 Senate Democrats and 220 House Democrats who have already voted for the bill will be permanently defined as members of a repudiated value system,” Gingrich says on his website.
“The Big Government Socialist brand will isolate the Washington Democrats from their own moderates and from the rest of the country,” he continued.
Almost proving his point, Nancy Pelosi, during a Chatham House event on Friday, remarked that “In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should.”
She’s wrong of course. Capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty. From 1980 to 2006, the American-style free-market system reduced the number of those living in extreme poverty by 80 percent. But Pelosi thinks the system is broken and needs to change. “So what we want to do is not depart from that, but to improve it,” she claimed. “You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”
She won’t say so directly, because she knows, just as Newt Gingrinch does, that advocating for socialism directly will hurt her cause. So, she has to pitch the $3.5 trillion spending bill as an “improvement” upon capitalism. Big government has been trying to “improve” capitalism for years with terrible results. FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s War on Poverty, and Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, all failed to achieve the prosperity and fairness Democrats claim lacks in unbridled capitalism. How much more evidence do we need we can’t spend our way to prosperity? Under Trump, we saw massive reductions in regulations that lead to historic economic growth—heck, unlike the Obama “recovery” we actually saw minorities win in the Trump economy.
Nancy Pelosi’s attack on capitalism, therefore, plays right into what Gingrich was saying. Democrats own the $3.5 trillion spending bill and Republicans need to act according to turn the tide against it. Newt Gingrich gave the GOP a battle plan for achieving victory—and Nancy Pelosi just gave the GOP even more ammunition.