As I noted in my Sunday column, the GOP presidential pack has three candidates who haven’t served in office for five to 13 years. Newt Gingrich hasn’t been House Speaker since 1999.
Saturday morning while he was in town for the California GOP convention, comrades Marinucci and Garofoli and I sat down with Gingrich. I asked him if he thought that, having not served in office for more than a decade, he thought he might be “rusty.” Gingrich answered: “No, not particularly.”
And: “There’s a difference between, ‘Am I a little rusty?’ and ‘Do I think I’m dealing with a different world than we had in 1994?’ Sure. Of course we are. One of the things I would want to do shortly after the election is schedule every single Democrat in the House and Senate for one-on-one meetings, to find out whether or not there’s a coalition to be built, which you know you can’t build through the leaders. The leaders are the most partisan partisan part about the system. And yet you know that there are a lot of members, if members are faced with four years of working with you, there are a lot of individual members who would be glad to sit down and say, ‘Gee, this is my pet project. This is what I’m most worried about, this is what I want to get done, and you might be able to build bipartisan coalitions’.”
Does he think Congress is more partisan now or less? Gingrich answered that it’s “much more partisan.”
Indeed, Gingrich told me he thought he could find Democrats who would join his plan to end civil service.
Who knew Newt was so anxious to work with Democrats. But when you think about it, it makes sense. After all, it’s Republicans who forced Gingrich to resign as Speaker. At the time, he denounced their “cannibalism.” Gingrich frequently talks up his cozy relations with Bill Clinton and how he was able to work with Democrats on welfare reform and the budget. Quoth the Newter, “Everything I passed, Bill Clinton signed.” Note Gingrich did not say: Everything we passed.
