Conservatives' hostility toward President Joe Biden blinds them to "just how effective Biden has been on his terms," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in an opinion column posted on his website Wednesday.
He said Biden has "built upon and fortified the left-wing Big Government Socialist woke culture system" while conservatives stew.
"We dislike Biden so much, we pettily focus on his speaking difficulties, sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory, and other personal flaws," Gingrich wrote. "Our aversion to him and his policies makes us underestimate him and the Democrats.
"But remember: Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan both preferred to be underestimated. Both wanted people to think of them as pleasant — but not dangerous. They found being underestimated was a major asset. While people laughed at them, they were busy achieving their goals and getting their programs implemented."
Gingrich, no doubt referring to the recent midterms, said "winning and losing creates a clarity of analysis about who is doing well and who isn't."
If Republicans want to improve upon last month's election that was disappointing despite winning a House majority, Gingrich said the party needs "to rethink from the ground up how we are going to Defeat Big Government Socialism — including almost inevitable second-time Democrat Presidential Nominee Biden."
"The Biden team had one of the best first term off-year elections in history. They were not repudiated," Gingrich wrote. "They did not have to pay for their terrible mismanagement of the economy.
"If Republicans are going to successfully work through the next two years in the Congress — and win the presidency in 2024 — we need to look much more deeply at what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022."
Gingrich said Biden "genially bumbled into becoming a major force in the Senate" before serving as vice president, and now president.
"The Biden team took an amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the U.S. House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate and turned it into trillions of dollars in spending — and a series of radical bills," Gingrich wrote. "The latest bill on sexual rights overriding all other rights was bitterly opposed by virtually every conservative even as it passed with Republican support.
"Biden has carefully and cautiously waged war in Ukraine with no American troops. Although poorly timed and slowly delivered, U.S. weapons and financial aid have helped cripple what most thought would be an easy victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin."
Biden and Democrats then avoided a midterms disaster "despite terrible problems with the economy, crime, and the border."
"Biden and his team executed a strategy of polarizing Americans against Donald Trump supporters," Gingrich wrote. "They turned Jan. 6 into a crisis which eclipsed the Left's previous summer of fire, chaos, and destruction. They also grossly exaggerated the threat to abortion rights. And it all worked."
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