NEWT:
No, I look, I think the chairwoman is doing exactly the right thing. She understands that we have to be competitive. I mean, it would be like a football team deciding they didn’t like forward passes, you know? I mean, if that’s the game and that’s what’s going on, then I think you’ve got to learn to play within the game. t’s a lot like we don’t really have Election Day anymore. We have election months. Or elections six or seven weeks? Well, if you don’t compete in that environment, by the time you get around to the old fashioned way of doing it, you’ve probably already lost the election.
NEWT:
I think that’s part of the changes that came out of the way that the law was changed. What you have now between the Citizens United case and the McCain-Feingold bill is parties have very limited resources. Billionaires go out and create PACs. And so the amount of money is enormous, but the amount of money that the parties control is dramatically smaller as a percent than it used to be.
NEWT:
More particularly Republicans, I mean, Republicans historically like to vote on Election Day and they now have to you have to you you have to be competitive from the very first day you’re allowed to vote. We’ve got to be out there getting votes in. And and it’s interesting difference. Democrats focus on the election. Republicans focus on the campaign, a huge difference. And that’s part of why I wrote the book on on March to the Majority is that we’ve got to get back and understand how the system works, and then we’ve got to be competitive within that system.
NEWT:
I think you have to think of it as a two lake competition. There’s a Trump lake that’s about 53, right? Today, 53% and then everybody else. And one of the challenges for DeSantis or anybody else is how do you drain the Trump lake? Because you don’t drain the Trump lake, doesn’t matter how many people over here in the secondary lake, they’re not going to win. And I think that’s the great challenge. How do you go after Trump? And at least up till now, there is a poll that DeSantis took in Iowa that showed him moving. But it’s a poll that his campaign took it out. We’ll see if there’s any other poll.
NEWT:
I’m a big fan of Mike Pence, and I have known him for many, many years. He’s a wonderful, decent human being. The biggest challenge he’s going to face is every commercial and every interview he did in favor of Trump. I mean, you know, on the one hand, you say, well, you said this, but now you said this, and he’s got to figure that. But it also gets back to the other problem, which is, you know, you you have Governor Christie has announced now the governor of North Dakota is announcing he’s a billionaire. He’ll be a self-funder. I was here the other night with Tim Scott, who I think is a wonderfully positive human being. You’re going to have 20 candidates, and I guarantee you every new candidate leads to more champagne being popped down on Mar-a-Largo. Yeah. I mean, with Donald Trump wants is 15 or 20 candidates and then he’ll be the one person everybody knows and the others will be out here in sort of a scrum.
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