Gingrich: GOP needs to change course

After he finished ripping on President Obama’s foreign policy on nuclear weapons on Sunday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the Republican Party needs to get back to its roots or it risks alienating a large part of its base.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the Georgia Republican said Republicans “continue to insist on earmarks and continue to insist on big spending.”

“Republicans,: Gingrich went on, “need to understand that there is a country that did not like the big spending of the last administration.”

Those Republicans want to see an alternative to the Obama administration, Gingrich said.

Gingrich’s remarks came days after the former speaker suggested that if the GOP doesn’t change its ways, a third party could emerge before the 2012 presidential election.

“Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year. If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months,” Gingrich told a group of college students in Missouri last week, according to KY3 News.

On Sunday, Gingrich said he wasn’t giving up on the GOP just yet. With some changes, he sees the GOP creating a much broader coalition.

“If Republicans decide to be a genuine reform party focused on American solutions,” he said, “we will, in fact, creat a much larger party probably as early as next year.”

jeremy.jacobs@digital-stage.thehill.com