Newt Gingrich issues wake-up call to Republicans: 'Quit underestimating President Biden'

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Newt Gingrich reacts to Republicans' underperformance in midterms: 'I was surprised'

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich weighs in on election results as the balance of power in both houses of Congress is still up for grabs.

Newt Gingrich has a message for Republicans: Like it or not, President Biden is winning, and it's time to stop "underestimating" him.

The former House speaker shared his thoughts on the 2022 midterm elections in a blog post on his website this week. Looking back at the disappointing GOP performance – Republicans failed to win the Senate and have a slim 222-seat majority in the House – Gingrich acknowledged that Biden "had one of the best first term off-year elections in history" and said the Democrats' victories should provide "clarity" about what's working and what isn't for Republicans. 

"Like most Americans, I do not approve of the job he is doing. Like virtually all conservatives and Republicans, I deeply oppose his policies. They are clearly weakening America and strengthening our enemies. And, again, like most Americans, I oppose the woke policies which are undermining and threatening to destroy popular, unique, shared American culture," Gingrich wrote.

"However," he added, "conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms. He has only built upon and fortified the left-wing Big Government Socialist woke culture system."

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a rally at Ballyhoos restaurant one day before the midterm elections on Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden speaks to volunteers at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) phone banking event on Dec. 2, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts for Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock's, D-Ga., re-election campaign. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

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Gingrich favorably compared Biden to Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, two successful Republicans who he said "both preferred to be underestimated."

He observed that over five decades of public service, Biden was a "major force" in the Senate, went on to become a two-term vice president, and won the 2020 election while campaigning from his "basement" at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. 

"The Biden team took an amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the U.S. House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate and turned it into trillions of dollars in spending – and a series of radical bills," Gingrich continued. "The latest bill on sexual rights overriding all other rights was bitterly opposed by virtually every conservative even as it passed with Republican support." 

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Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., watch election results in a room with staffers at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

He also praised Biden for "carefully" supporting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia without involving U.S. troops.

"Despite terrible problems with the economy, crime, and the border (which led many analysts, me included, to assume the GOP would make big gains in November) Biden and his team executed a strategy of polarizing Americans against Donald Trump supporters," Gingrich wrote. "They turned Jan. 6 into a crisis which eclipsed the Left’s previous summer of fire, chaos, and destruction. They also grossly exaggerated the threat to abortion rights. And it all worked."

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His conclusion was that too many Republicans have neglected to acknowledge or understand that the party's approach to voters has failed. 

"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," Gingrich wrote.