Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) slammed former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon on Tuesday, telling Sean Hannity on his radio program that the Breitbart chairman’s strategy for creating a civil war inside the Republican party is “stunningly stupid.”
The perspective from Gingrich comes after Bannon, who resigned from his White House post on Aug. 18, declared on Oct. 9 in his own interview with Hannity on Fox News that he is looking to challenge every sitting Republican lawmaker with the exception of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), adding “no one is safe.”
“There’s a coalition coming together that is going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz,” Bannon said.
{mosads}”There’s a basic agenda that Trump ran on and won. He carried states Republicans haven’t carried in living memory — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. This agenda works. The American people voted for it,” he added.
Gingrich pushed back on Hannity’s nationally-syndicated radio show Tuesday when asked about Bannon’s comments.
“The point I would make as a strategist is you got 10 Democrats up next year in states Trump carried,” Gingrich noted. “You have six Democrats up next year in states Trump carried by a huge margin. Now you take the amount of money Bannon is going to raise. If he spent that money in North Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia — the fact is you would have such a big Republican majority, you’d pass the stuff you guys want to pass.”
“Creating a civil war inside the Republican Party may feel good, but I think as a strategy, it is stunningly stupid. I’m just being really honest,” he added.
Bannon backed Roy Moore in an Alabama special GOP primary held earlier this month, where the challenger defeated incumbent Alabama Sen. Luther Strange despite Strange getting an endorsement from President Trump.
McConnell and GOP allies put millions into the election in an effort to defeat Moore, but Moore won comfortably, by a 10-point margin.
Bannon called the Moore victory a “revolution” for Republicans and has used the recent retirement announcement of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) as an example that the insurgent movement on the right is on the rise.