Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wants congressional Republicans to ride to victory in November by going full-bore at the DSA, “Big Government Socialism” and “weird values.”
Left-wing Democratic candidates have scored big wins in New York and Colorado, with other opportunities in Michigan Tuesday and Wisconsin later this month.
For Gingrich, the architect of the political warfare that supercharged the GOP’s 1994 House takeover, this is the opportunity the GOP must exploit.
The Democrats’ leftward lurch is their “greatest vulnerability,” according to a strategy memo that he shared with Senate Republicans at a closed luncheon this week, which was obtained by The Post.
Titled “The Republican Opportunity to Win Big in 2026,” Gingrich’s memo argues that “the greatest vulnerability of the 2026 Democrats is the degree to which they have become the party of Big Government Socialism and weird values.”
“Socialism by itself has been given a new lease on life by three generations of college brainwashing. However, even most young people dislike the term big government so much that big government socialism is much less acceptable to Gen Z voters than socialism,” he argues.
“The case against big government socialism: BGS does not create jobs. Does not increase wages, does not train or educate for the future, does not make people healthier, does not work. It just runs out of other people’s money to spend.”
Gingrich said Dems might be able to win if they make the elections a “referendum on the current state of things” – an acknowledgement of the persistent inflation and opposition to the war with Iran that threatens the GOP majority in both the House and Senate.
But they could face a historic “annihilation” if Republicans make it a “choice” election, he argued. He compared it to the “Jeffersonian annihilation of the Federalist Party” between 1796 and 1812.
Members of Gingrich’s audience agreed, and identified Democratic Socialists of America candidates and its new manifesto as a political gift.
Dems are “literally ceding themselves to this absolutely insane anti-American platform, abolishing the Senate, abolishing the Pentagon, abolish ICE, get rid of all prisons in the country. That’s not where America really stands,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told The Post after lunching with Gingrich.
Gingrich “thinks that the Democrats are really hurting themselves with this DSA message out there, and it’s a gift to Republicans,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) noted: “His real pitch was that there’s so many things that we are on the right side of, 80-plus (support) issues. That’s what we ought to talk about.”
Republicans will need a ground game and millions to spend on the airwaves to carry out the game plan.
Trump, who faces investigations if Republicans lose Congress, currently holds an approval rating of negative 40-58, and Democrats have amassed a 5% lead on the “generic” question of which party voters prefer, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
The 10-term house Republican had another audience Wednesday night. He met with President Trump in the Oval Office before flying back to Bern with his wife Callista Gingrich, the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland. Earlier he attended funeral services for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
