Newt Gingrich, longtime Georgia congressman and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, isn’t one to pull his punches. He also maintains a deep interest in Georgia politics. In this context, as he looks to the May GOP gubernatorial primary, he says former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is “the closest parallel Georgia has to Glenn Youngkin (who beat the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia).”
He believes “Georgians need a unifier (Perdue) who can help lead the state to a better future.” And Gingrich lays out scenarios.
“In one scenario, he says “Stacey Abrams could win the general election as a deeply committed Big Government Socialist, who has been anointed by the national Democratic Party as its candidate. She would be charged with doing to Georgia what Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are trying to do to Washington. That future has higher taxes, bigger bureaucracies, more gun control, and more radical education for Georgia’s children – including Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project’s left-wing rewriting of American history.”
“Unfortunately,” Gingrich continues, “a second term for Gov. Brian Kemp will be equally divisive. His long war with former President Donald Trump has deeply divided the Republican Party and all conservatives. Instead of trying to reconcile with the former president and his million-plus supporters in Georgia, Kemp has followed a policy of ruthlessly purging Trump supporters and trying to move to the center at the expense of the majority of the Republican Party. The result of the Kemp decision to double down on his fight with President Trump has destroyed the governor’s ability to win a general election – even if Kemp somehow won the primary, he would almost certainly lose in November.”
While Kemp can use the power of the governor’s office to line up a wide range of elected officials, Gingrich continues, “his failure to reach out to the Trump base simply guarantees a fight between the elected officials and the people. … Sadly, Kemp’s decision to prolong and intensify his fight with the most popular leader in the Georgia GOP (Trump) has virtually guaranteed that a Kemp nomination will lead to an Abrams governorship – and all the fighting and alienation that kind of radical administration would bring with it.”
The former House speaker, to bolster his argument, cites the InsiderAdvantage polling of our own company chairman Matt Towery. Towery wrote Gingrich, saying:
“The difficulty for the GOP in Georgia is that there is a resolute and significant amount of the Trump base that will not vote for Brian Kemp in a General Election. This makes a Kemp victory against a credible African-American Democrat problematic and may well hinder the success of even a popular nominee for the Senate, such as Herschel Walker. Mid-term elections are all about turnout. And in Georgia, having an anti-Trump persona bleeds over to other candidates with that base. Suburban voters who voted Biden will flip on the issues, but the hardcore Trump base will stay resolute.”
By comparison with Kemp’s divisive strategy, Gingrich notes, “we have just watched the vision of a unified future win an amazing victory in Virginia.”
Youngkin won in part, Gingrich underscores, “because he managed to bring together the Trump base in rural Virginia (which gave him enormous margins of up to 81 percent in some counties) and the suburban parents who were upset about closed schools and radical left-wing theories being used to indoctrinate their children. He also attracted support from a wide range of minority voters who were motivated by concern over failing education, rising crime and growing inflation. It was the desire for unity and a better future which led to victory.”
That’s why Gingrich says “the closest parallel Georgia has to Glenn Youngkin is David Perdue.” That’s why Gingrich would like Perdue to run against Kemp for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, to win it and then go on to defeat the Democrat candidate in November.
