SEA ISLAND, Ga. — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich conceded to overzealously targeting President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, saying it was a strategic misstep that backfired on the Republican majority he led in the House of Representatives.
Gingrich offered that assessment during the Washington Examiner’s Sea Island Summit as part of a discussion about the incoming Democratic majority in the House. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is encouraging Democrats to temper their oversight of President Trump, warning that “presidential harassment” of Clinton — an independent counsel investigation that culminated in his impeachment in 1998 — was politically disastrous for the GOP. Gingrich, in self-reflective comments, agreed.
“I think McConnell’s largely right; I think we mishandled the investigation,” Gingrich said. “We should have been calmer and slower.”
Clinton presided over a historic midterm loss in 1994, with the Republicans winning 54 seats and the House majority for the first time in four decades. Republicans also captured the Senate that year. But the Democratic president would go on to win re-election in 1996 and watch his party pick up seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Gingrich, who had predicted GOP gains that year, resigned as speaker.
Top Republicans came to believe that Clinton and his party recovered primarily because American voters viewed the GOP’s aggressive investigations and impeachment effort as misguided and politically motivated. Republicans who served at the time also believed Clinton profited politically from government shutdowns they forced to extract budget concessions from Clinton.
Gingrich, a presidential contender in 2012, was an early Trump supporter in the 2016 campaign. Occasionally critical of the president, the former speaker generally believes that he is on the right track with his policy agenda and style of communicating that is unorthodox and often provocative.
Gingrich and Trump are in regular contact, and he suggested that the president was in fine spirits in the aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Democrats won a sweeping victory in the House but fell short and remain in the minority in the Senate. Trump has been particularly active on Twitter since the conclusion of Tuesday’s elections, as attention turns to his 2020 re-election bid.
“He loves campaigning; he loves rallies. He is essentially a vaudevillian,” Gingrich said. “He wants people to listen to him and he understands that entertainment precedes education.”
“I think he thought that he was pretty effective in the Senate races, and I think he was probably furious about what’s happening in Arizona and Florida right now,” Gingrich added, referring to one Senate contest, in Arizona, where the ballot counting has been slow, and Florida, where Senate and gubernatorial races could be headed toward recounts.
