NEWT:
Speaker McCarthy has had an amazing first 100 days. 86% of his bills had Democrats vote for them and a number of cases a majority of Democrats voted for them. So, it’s been a more dramatically more bipartisan and unified congress than Nancy Pelosi ever had. He has a challenge right now in that he has to listen to his own conference, find the votes to pass a debt ceiling as the first step. Budget comes much later. My hunch is he will get it done because I know that Tom Emmer, the whip, Steve Scalise as the majority leader are out there every day talking to people and listening to people and the conference chairs is also out there. So, there is a team effect here that I think people didn’t quite expect but the 15 rounds it took for McCarthy to finally win the speakership I think actually unified the party. I think people got a lot of it out of their system. Now comes the hard work. They have to find what is it that you can get passed? I don’t think they need to worry about the white house, they need to worry about the house. If they pass something from the house and send it to the senate the ball is in the senate’s court and see how they react to it.
NEWT:
Well, I think those are two different questions. First of all the abortion issue comes down to who is the more extreme. If you end up with a Democrat who is for infanticide or abortion on the last day or abortion for sex preference that person could be in trouble. You end up with a Republican who won’t except exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother that person will be in trouble. It will take a while to sort it out and talk it through. In the case of Governor DeSantis he has decided he has to run at least as conservative as Trump and this bill certainly is in that direction and fits other things he has done including school reform, anti-woke activities, places where he has clearly made a mark as an aggressive conservative governor this kind of fits the pattern.
NEWT:
I think you saw this frankly in Wisconsin where I think the media overstated what happened. The Democrats outspent the Republicans in a supreme court seat by about almost 7-1. The Republican candidate was incoherent. He couldn’t quite explain what he stood for in terms of abortion. Candidates — the most commonly accepted position is 15 weeks. Majority of Americans agree there should be some limitation on abortion. That’s why the Democrats in the end may be more vulnerable than they think. But I think at the same time Republicans have to be very clear about protecting women’s rights and very clear that they are not extremist in terms of not allowing abortion in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother which we had a candidate for governor in Pennsylvania whose position was so extreme he could never break out and get the conversation.
NEWT:
Yes. I think that’s right. I suspect Trump is close to 15 weeks because that’s where the country is. DeSantis decided to run to his right. First of all, this is only one of a whole series of issues. That’s an important thing to remember when you get to a general election. Second, I think that DeSantis is clearly trying to find a way to be quote the real conservative in the race which I think is pretty hard if Donald Trump is the other guy. And we’ll see how it works out. Republicans are going to have to cope with this everywhere in the country but so are Democrats. There are a number of states where it is a huge disadvantage to being a left wing Democrat who is for abortion on the last day.
