Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a blog post that the Republican Party “must learn to quit underestimating” President Biden.
Gingrich said in the post on his website that Biden has been successful by his own definition of success, and Republicans’ aversion to him has caused them to underestimate him and Democrats.
“We dislike Biden so much, we pettily focus on his speaking difficulties, sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory, and other personal flaws,” he said.
Gingrich’s comments come after Democrats outperformed expectations in the midterms on their way to holding their majority in the Senate and only narrowly losing control of the House. Republicans hoped to make sweeping gains in both houses of Congress, but many candidates lost in key races.
He said Biden was able to get trillions of dollars in spending and a series of “radical” bills from a four-vote majority in the House and a tie in the Senate, where Vice President Harris serves as the tiebreaking vote. He added that the president has also ensured that U.S. weapons and financial support help Ukraine cripple Russian troops who were invading.
Gingrich said Biden and Democrats carried out a strategy of “polarizing” Americans against supporters of former President Trump. He said they turned the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection into a “crisis” and exaggerated the threat to abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
He said the Biden administration had one of the best first-term midterm elections in history, and the GOP needs to look “deeply” at what worked and didn’t work in 2020 and 2022.
“Today there is not nearly enough understanding (or acknowledgement) among leading Republicans that our system and approach failed,” Gingrich said. “We need to rethink from the ground up how we are going to Defeat Big Government Socialism – including almost inevitable second-time Democrat Presidential Nominee Biden.”
He said defeating Biden will be a much bigger challenge than he would have guessed before the midterms.
Gingrich previously said during an appearance on Fox News last month that Biden’s effort of “demonizing” Republicans seemed to have worked in the midterms.