Newt Gingrich: Focus on inflation, crime a winning agenda for Republicans in 2022

DES MOINES — Republicans can win a majority in Congress by focusing on high prices, crime and border security, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Tuesday in Des Moines.

Gingrich was on the campaign trail with Zach Nunn, a Republican state senator seeking election to Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. Nunn is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat.

The former representative from Georgia who led the Republican House majority from 1995 to 1999 said the House Republicans’ “Commitment to America” policy agenda is more sophisticated and detailed than the “Contract With America” Gingrich authored in the 1994 midterm elections.

The messaging will work, Gingrich said, because people are feeling the effects of things like inflation and higher crime rates in some cities in their everyday lives.

“There are large realities that sort of drown politics,” he said.

Democrats currently control both the U.S. House and Senate, but many elections rating outlets say Republicans are more likely than not to win a majority in the House after the midterms.

The Commitment to America, unveiled by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California last month, calls for four overarching principles: “An economy that’s strong,” “a nation that’s safe,” “a future that’s built on freedom,” and “a government that’s accountable.”

Within those pillars, the plan calls for cutting government spending, boosting energy production, increasing funding to border enforcement and police officers, and calls to “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.”

Gingrich said all Republican candidates should make talking about high prices and inflation their top priority.

“High prices affect every person in Iowa. They affect every Latino, they affect every African American, they affect every Native American,” he said. “They affect young people, they affect old people. They affect small towns, they affect Des Moines.”

As Republicans have been running on the issues Gingrich highlighted, Democrats have been focusing on protecting abortion rights, seeing it as a winning issue for the party ahead of the midterms. Iowa’s Democrats have also focused on health care costs in recent ads and public appearances.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Matt Corridoni said a Republican majority would lead to abortion restrictions and higher health care costs.

"Iowans won't be fooled by Zach Nunn and Newt Gingrich trying to stick lipstick on a pig,” he said in an emailed statement. “The only thing Republicans are committing to is an extreme ban on abortion and a promise to raise healthcare costs by repealing Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices."

Recent national polls show inflation and the economy as major concerns of American voters. In a late-September national poll conducted by Grinnell College and Selzer & Co., the economy ranked second as a motivating issue for voters, with 77 percent of respondents saying it was a major factor, but it ranked below “the overall health of American democracy,” which was a major factor for 81 percent of voters.

Third and fourth in that poll were public school issues at 70 percent and abortion at 67 percent.

A Politico-Harvard survey from September found inflation, the economy and jobs, and guns ranked in the top three among voters’ most important issues, followed by abortion. Crime came in ninth and gas prices fifth.

Gingrich said he expects Republicans to pick up between 20 and 50 seats in the House in the midterms, and he encouraged those gathered at the Fort Des Moines Museum to encourage their friends and family to vote in November.

“The red wave occurs one vote at a time,” he said. “And making sure that every one of your friends, every one of your relatives, everybody you know votes, in an off year particularly, it really matters.”

Comments: cmccullough@qctimes.com