Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has highlighted the uniqueness of the Trump political movement, which will dominate the national conversation for the next 285 days.
Gingrich, who earned a PhD in history before entering politics, notes in an essay Wednesday that Americans are now living through “the longest general election campaign in history” since the Republican nomination was effectively decided on January 23.
The only other president to lose re-election and then come back and win was Grover Cleveland, Gingrich observes, who won in 1884, lost in 1888, and then won again in 1892.
The news producers, editors, and reporters of mainstream media “are now in a state of shock – and even more desperate to find some news hook that will draw in viewers and readers,” he adds.
As a result, “the 2024 political drama will be about President Trump dominating the landscape and leading a political movement unlike anything we have seen in modern times,” he writes.
File/Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, arrives at Trump Tower on another day of meetings scheduled with President-elect Donald Trump on November 21, 2016 in New York. (EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP via Getty Images)
This will play in Trump’s favor, Gingrich argues, since a “vigorous series of Trump rallies” will stand in stark contrast with the passiveness and “slow, meager Biden campaign effort.”
“You aren’t going to be seeing 20,000-plus excited Biden supporters relishing a 90-minute speech by their candidate,” he contends. “The rhythm and pattern of the two campaigns is going to be a case study in asymmetry.”
Attempts by the American left to paint Donald Trump as some kind of Kaiser Soze who poses an existential threat to the survival of American freedom will be “dwarfed by the realities of Biden’s practical failures on virtually every front,” Gingrich suggests, as well as the real achievements of Trump’s first term.
In point of fact, the Trump presidency grew the economy; made America energy independent while lowering the price of gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil; kept inflation under control; controlled the border; supported law enforcement and fought crime; stopped terrorism and exercised effective power in the world, Gingrich recalls.
With the nominating race over and 285 days to campaign, “no Republican has ever had the potential to grow such a startling majority,” he states.
