Which states can gingrich win

Effective as these tactics were in the short term, they had a corrosive effect on the way Congress operated. But Gingrich looks back with pride on the transformations he set in motion. And no one was noisier than Newt. It was , and he was 15 years old. His family was visiting Verdun, a small city in northeastern France where , people had been killed during World War I.

The battlefield was still scarred by cannon fire, and young Newt spent the day wandering around, taking in the details. He found a rusted helmet on the ground, saw the ossuary where the bones of dead soldiers were piled high. His mother struggled with manic depression , and spent much of her adult life in a fog of medication. Gingrich moved around a lot and had few friends his age; he spent more time alone in his room reading books about dinosaurs than he did playing with the neighborhood kids.

But this is not the stuff Gingrich likes to talk about. Those family picnics at the zoo that he has been reminiscing about all day? It was in Verdun that Gingrich found an identity, a sense of purpose. The next year, Gingrich turned in a page term paper about the balance of global power, and announced to his teacher that his family was moving to Georgia, where he planned to start a Republican Party in the then—heavily Democratic state and get himself elected to Congress.

Gingrich immersed himself in war histories and dystopian fiction and books about techno-futurism—and as the years went on, he became fixated on the idea that he was a world-historic hero. As Gingrich tells me about his epiphany in Verdun, a man in a baseball cap approaches us in full fanboy mode. I love you on Fox. After the superfan leaves, I make a passing observation about how many admirers Gingrich has at the zoo.

As his national profile had risen, so too had his influence within the Republican caucus—his original quorum of 12 disciples having expanded to dozens of sharp-elbowed House conservatives who looked to him for guidance. The goal was to reframe the boring policy debates in Washington as a national battle between good and evil, white hats versus black—a fight for the very soul of America. Through this prism, any news story could be turned into a wedge. A deranged South Carolina woman murdered her two children?

Gingrich was not above mining the darkest reaches of the right-wing fever swamps for material. When Vince Foster, a staffer in the Clinton White House, committed suicide, Gingrich publicly flirted with fringe conspiracy theories that suggested he had been assassinated. Despite his growing grassroots following, Gingrich remained unpopular among a certain contingent of congressional Republicans, who were scandalized by his tactics. Gingrich unleashed a smear campaign aimed at taking Wright down.

He reportedly circulated unsupported rumors about a scandal involving a teenage congressional page, and tried to tie Wright to shady foreign-lobbying practices. Watergate, this was not. Heading into the midterms, he rallied Republicans around the idea of turning Election Day into a national referendum.

While candidates fanned out across the country to campaign on the contract, Gingrich and his fellow Republican leaders in Congress held fast to their strategy of gridlock. As Election Day approached, they maneuvered to block every piece of legislation they could—even those that might ordinarily have received bipartisan support, like a lobbying-reform bill—on the theory that voters would blame Democrats for the paralysis. Pundits, aghast at the brazenness of the strategy, predicted backlash from voters—but few seemed to notice.

Even some Republicans were surprised by what they were getting away with. By the time voters went to the polls, exit surveys revealed widespread frustration with Congress and a deep appetite for change. Republicans achieved one of the most sweeping electoral victories in modern American history.

They picked up 54 seats in the House and seized state legislatures and governorships across the country; for the first time in 40 years, the GOP took control of both houses of Congress.

On election night, Republicans packed into a ballroom in the Atlanta suburbs , waving placards that read liberals, your time is up! Grinning out at the audience, he announced that a package had just arrived at the White House with some Tylenol in it.

T he freshman Republicans who entered Congress in January were lawmakers created in the image of Newt: young, confrontational, and determined to inflict radical change on Washington. From the creation of interstate highways to the passage of civil-rights legislation, the most significant, lasting acts of Congress have been achieved by lawmakers who deftly maneuver through the legislative process and work with members of both parties.

On January 4, Speaker Gingrich gaveled Congress into session, and promptly got to work transforming America. Determined to keep Republicans in power, Gingrich reoriented the congressional schedule around filling campaign war chests, shortening the official work week to three days so that members had time to dial for dollars.

There had been federal funding lapses before, but they tended to be minor affairs that lasted only a day or two. The gambit was a bust—voters blamed the GOP for the crisis, and Gingrich was castigated in the press—but it ensured that the shutdown threat would loom over every congressional standoff from that point on. Over the course of several secret meetings at the White House in the fall of , Gingrich told me, he and Clinton sketched out plans for a center-right coalition that would undertake big, challenging projects such as a wholesale reform of Social Security.

Never mind that Republicans had no real chance of getting the impeachment through the Senate. He thought he was enshrining a new era of conservative government. In fact, he was enshrining an attitude—angry, combative, tribal—that would infect politics for decades to come. In the years since he left the House, Gingrich has only doubled down. Mickey Edwards, the Oklahoma Republican, who served in the House for 16 years, told me he believes Gingrich is responsible for turning Congress into a place where partisan allegiance is prized above all else.

He noted that during Watergate, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign only because leaders of his own party broke ranks to hold him accountable—a dynamic Edwards views as impossible in the post-Gingrich era.

Newt has been a big part of eroding that. This page was current at the end of the official's last term in office covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.

Republican Party. Personal Facebook. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source. Categories : Trump administration influencers Donald Trump endorsements by influencer individuals, Pages with broken file links Republican Party Georgia presidential candidate National Influencers Individuals.

Hidden category: Pages with reference errors. Voter information What's on my ballot? Where do I vote? How do I register to vote? How do I request a ballot?

When do I vote? When are polls open? Who Represents Me? Congress special elections Governors State executives State legislatures Ballot measures State judges Municipal officials School boards. How do I update a page? Election results. Privacy policy About Ballotpedia Disclaimers Login. But early in his career, Gingrich suggested he was ready to abandon academia for politics.

He made his first run for public office -- a bid for Congress -- four years after joining the faculty at West Georgia. Gingrich has written prolifically, but never so much as when he became an established Beltway politician.

Do you like the state of the Republican Party? Do you think you ought to respect Bill Brock because he has done such a great job?

They have done a terrible job, a pathetic job. In my lifetime, literally in my lifetime, I was born in , we have not had a competent national Republican leader. Not ever! Now the reason I am being harshly critical is because I want you all to learn a lesson. When you see somebody doing something dumb, say it. You don't help your party any by neatly sitting off to one side and saying, "God I wish you weren't so stupid.

And when you say it, say it in the press, say it loud, fight, scrap, issue a press release, go make a speech. Full list of possible appointees. On September 27, , more than candidates for Congress gathered on the steps of the U.

Capitol to sign a pledge to the American people, a promise to vote on 10 key reforms if we won a majority in the House of Representatives. But more than any particular proposal, the important thing about the document was its form: It was a contract, a real commitment to reform and accountability and renewal. It sought above all to 'restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.

Colin Powell. Hillary Clinton. DeRay McKesson. The Washington Post. Michael Chertoff. Larry Pressler. The Hill. George P. Donald Trump. Michael Bloomberg. Jesse Ventura. Gary Johnson. Even in more serene times, incumbent presidents typically suffer losses in the House midway through their first term. When [Bill] Clinton won, we picked up 54 seats two years later and when [Barack] Obama won, we picked up 63 seats two years later. Control of the Senate, meanwhile, hinges on two runoff races in Georgia early next month.

If Republicans preserve their narrow majority, will Biden be able to work with the majority leader, Mitch McConnell? And Mitch will be happy with either outcome. There is a historical rhyme here with the s when Gingrich led a Republican majority against a centrist Democratic president in the shape of Clinton. There may be lessons from that experience for both sides.

He signed welfare reform, he signed capital gains tax cut, he signed four balanced budgets. Could Biden, who is making overtures to Republicans and giving little voice to the left in his cabinet, pay a similar price? The Clinton v Gingrich years are also often cited as the start of the rot in American democracy.