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by Ken Rudin
June 20, 2010
Richard Drew/AP
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pictured during a May 18 appearance on
Fox & Friends, sees similarities between this year's midterm elections and
those of 1994.
Newt Gingrich helped design the plan that brought Republicans control of the
House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. It's a majority the GOP held
until voters kicked them out in 2006, when many in the party said it lost
its way, and they were further set back with additional Democratic gains in
2008. Not to mention the election of a Democrat to the White House.
Gingrich is once again working to bring Republicans back to power, this time
as a minister without portfolio ... and as a potential presidential
candidate. His new book, To Save America, was written as a reaction to what
he sees is President Obama's "secular-socialist machine" that is
overreaching and on the path to destroying the country. He sat down with
Guy Raz, host of NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, to talk about his book
and how he sees the state of the two parties. The interview will be
broadcast Sunday afternoon.
Raz immediately asks if 2010 resembles 1994 in any way, and Gingrich clearly
sees similarities. He says the economy is "much worse this year" than it
was under President Clinton in '94. But more important, he sees a "sense of
crisis" - the near ten percent unemployment rate, the oil spill in the Gulf,
the collapsing of the border with Mexico, the problems in the Middle East -
all of which have made people "more anxiety-ridden" than they were 16 years
ago. "They were irritated with Bill and Hillary Clinton and they were tired
of Democrats being in charge of Congress for 40 years," the former speaker
said, "but there wasn't the underlying sense of national problems that you
have today."