NEWT:
Well, I mean it was certainly a different night than I had predicted, and I think it’s going to take a lot of looking at and analyzing. We lost some races we thought we would win. We had some big victories. The governors did particularly well. I mean Governor DeSantis had a historic margin in Florida and all of Florida from the senate race to local races to congressional races, all of Florida was a huge victory. On the other hand, I think President Biden probably is breathing a sigh of relief today because the red wave, at most has become a red trickle and I have to confess, I thought it would be a much bigger Republican night than it was. So, there’s a lot — there’s an awful lot to learn about what didn’t work, why did some Democrats like Fetterman win which I didn’t think he would given his record on crime. And it turned out that the polls I think were indicating a — for a change, were indicating a bigger Republican tide than normal and that’s a different bias than we’ve seen for a long time. I think there will be a lot of sorting out. Republican governors did very well almost everywhere. Governor Sunun, Governor Devine the governor of Texas did very well. On the other hand, both in the house and senate, there were races that we thought we were going to win that we didn’t. And there was some people we didn’t think we would lose that we did. So, I think for Republicans, this will be a time to reassess and look at things, as it is for Democrats.
NEWT:
Well, first of all, I think Ron DeSantis got a huge boost and is much more likely to run for president now than we would have guessed. I think President Trump has to be looking at some of this and thinking about it because he worked very hard. He led a huge rally in Miami with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott two nights before the election. So, he can take some credit. But I think DeSantis is probably the biggest single winner of the night and that means he will overnight be — for everybody who doesn’t want president Trump, Ron DeSantis will now become far and away the leading alternative and a superstar and, frankly, you look at the size of his margins, you look at his reaction to the hurricane, somebody said to me this morning he just gets things done. And I think that that’s a big, big advantage for him. I have to confess, I was up most of the evening with Kevin McCarthy, looking at the data, talking to the analysts. There were a number of places where we thought we would do better than we did. I was delighted, the last campaign rally that I was at the night before the election was with Jen Kenigan. She did win in Virginia. But there were other places. I was also down in McAllen, Texas. We had three great Latina candidates. One of them won, two of them lost including Mayra Flores. You look at a — yeah. I’m with you. You look at all these things and you have to assess, what didn’t work. The democratic message of fear worked much better than I thought it would and I think that was part of it. So, I think it’s a despicable message for a president of the United States. I think Biden is the most divisive president in American history. But he and his staff this morning has to be saying, you know, all of those nasty speeches all those vicious attacks on Republicans it worked. The democrats had, let’s be honest, they had a much better off-year election than we thought they would. We did not have as good an off year election except with governor as we thought we would. I think honest Republicans have to stop and take a deep breath, look at the results, analyze them. We don’t know enough this morning to know exactly what happened in different parts of the country. We had a lot of candidates who came very close including some incumbents who lost by very narrow margins. That requires rethinking about a lot of stuff, the campaign consulting business, the polling business and what some of the messages were and looking carefully at what the Democrats did. They ran a very tough and you have to admit very effective campaign of fear.
NEWT:
I think that’s right, and she did a very good job of survival. What will be interesting is with Nancy Pelosi retiring, will Spamburger be more vocal in the congress. A lot of people who were vocal but obediently voted with Nancy almost no matter what came up. And they voted for trillions of dollars in spending, voted for very radical social policies. And frankly, while the policies were unpopular we were not able to tie them as directly to the candidates as we might have. Hung kau I think has a future. Everyone I know who has worked for him thinks he is fabulous and he will be back as a candidate of the future. There were a number of places where we had great candidates who came very close to winning who will probably be back in 2024. The question is, will the Democrats learn to moderate, or will they think we can get away with this, let’s continue going to the left as long as we go back home and pretend we aren’t.
NEWT:
Well, I think it’s not just Ron DeSantis. I think the message in part is the governors who were actually doing things, whether it was — look at the size of the margin for governor Devine or Governor Abbott. Republican governors had a very big night. And I think that the message of focusing on making people’s lives better, remember in many every case tease are governors who took on the radical extremists if the classroom, these are governors who were tough on crime, and these are governors who strongly favored economic development rather than big government socialism.
