Newt Gingrich interview with Chris Matthews.
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT: MSNBC’S CHRIS MATTHEWS INTERVIEWS GOP NOMINEE NEWT GINGRICH
NEW YORK – January 6, 2012 – Following is a transcript of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’ interview with Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, from tonight’s edition of “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” If used, must credit MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”
CHRIS MATTHEWS/NEWT GINGRICH INTERVIEW
CM: Mr. Speaker, one thing you said tonight really grabbed me, and I completely thought it was important for all Americans to hear regardless of ideology or partisanship. You said a president can’t do it by himself or herself that it’s about leadership once you’re there. It’s not a solo act.
NG: Right, look I think it’s essential. It’s a lesson I learned from studying Reagan and from studying Abraham Lincoln. That the ability to communicate with, martial, public opinion, have a feel, really stay close to the American people is at the heart of really effective leadership. And if you get very far away from it, you just start melting as a leader.
CM: But this idea of participation, the people do more than vote...that they continue participating in the new presidential phenomenon, right?
NG: I thought it was the great loss that Obama had. He had a huge audience election night. He had built up I think a 13 million or 15 million data bank of people - if he actually sent them the stimulus package and said, what do you think? You would live in a different country today – I mean if they had all said, gee I don’t know, how about this? How about that? But, people are smart. They don’t want you to have a pseudo-participatory system. They want to actually have the ability to give you input, to give you ideas. We don’t know how to do it - no one has ever done it well. Lincoln…
CM: I think Kennedy did a great job. The space program, the Peace Corps – it was all about rooting for the space program, everyone felt a part of it.
CM: Let me ask you about the quality of campaign and tone of the campaign and the tone of the administration following. You talked about, you compared –I think - is going on now for the Romney campaign with what happened in 2004, with the swift boating of John Kerry and how that sort of, polluted the water, if you will for what happened in the second Bush term. And how couldn’t get things done, like privatization.
NG: That’s right. One of the reasons I, again, drifted towards running was a paper I wrote in the summer of 04, which said that on 53 issues, John Kerry was in the minority by an average of 77 to 17. He was to the left of Teddy Kennedy, he could run a clean, straight choice campaign on big issues and they would have won a margin like Nixon did with McGovern. They couldn’t break loose. They were committed on taking Kerry on personally. When you run negative ads that are personal you may break the other guy - but you also break yourself.
CM: and divide the country
NG: and divide the country
CM: Let me ask you about this campaign. I know you want to go positive but the nature of this campaign was done against you in Iowa. Let’s talk about it because we all watched it. You couldn’t turn a television set on without hearing a negative ad on you, and about you personally. And they were written with ad copy, but they weren’t signed by anybody. There was no name on it that said “I paid for this ad” and my name is Mitt Romney.
NG: Right and I took Romney head on about this because it’s all baloney. That was his staff from last campaign with millionaire friends paying for it. Those are his ads. He did not have the guts to admit it.
CM: He did come out and say I could have called off the dogs, not using his words. I could have made it less negative. But why should I? This guy ought to be taking the heat but he basically backed them up.
NG: Right and here’s my answer. He has grandchildren. He outta run a campaign worthy of his grandchildren. He outta take those ads home and show them to his grandchildren... grandpa did this, what do you think of this kind of trash on television- someone being beaten up like this on television? We should run campaigns worthy of our best, not campaigns that demean us to our worst.
CM: Well, what was it like sitting in your hotel room, watching those ads?
NG: I didn’t do much [of that] - I was out campaigning.
CM: But you heard about them
NG: Well, I knew about them, I saw some of them, but look, the reason , the end to me, is like [an episode of]you’re not seeing me compare a Massachusetts moderate to a Reagan conservative is like Saturday Night Live, where Romney’s people were questioning whether I was a conservative - thought to myself, let me get this straight - this is a guy that didn’t support Reagan in the 80s, said in 94 he didn’t want to go back to Reagan policy, votes for Paul Tsongas in 92, who appointed liberal judges, has tax paid abortions, put Planned Parenthood into Romney care and - and he’s questioning whether I’m a conservative?
CM: Are you running a negative campaign right now?
NG: No, I’m running a …
CM: You’ve gone thru list of tyranny of the left as you see it. You’re laughing but you’re saying you’re running a positive campaign?
NG: No, look I’m running a campaign of contrast on public policy, which I was willing not to run if Romney had run a campaign of policy ideas. If I had stuck with policy ideas, by the way – I would have beaten him.
CM: You called him a Saturday Night Live joke.
NG: Well, that ad was a SNL joke - for a Massachusetts moderate to put out an ad questioning my credentials as a conservative, it’s the kind of chutzpah that you don’t really quite expect to find in someone like Romney.
CM: Let’s talk about Tampa. I have always thought, watching this thing from the other side, I could see it from the middle sometimes and sometimes sympathetically. I look at this tea party phenomenon - how do these people and their representatives go to Tampa at the end of this summer when it’s sweltering down there. I always like to the get the atmosphere in there – it’s hot, the humidity is 105 degrees, and they sit around and cheer Mitt Romney? How does that work?
NG: It won’t. He’s not going to be the nominee.
CM: Could it work if he were the nominee? Would [the tea party] ever be able to cheer him on there?
NG: They would never cheer him. Why would they cheer someone – if you were a Tea Party person, why would you cheer someone who raised taxes, created the prototype of Obama care - appointed liberal judges to appease the Democrats – that’s his line, not mine - and put in taxes paid abortions, took care of Planned Parenthood… here’s any easy question for you to answer -- - name one conservative accomplishment or public policy of Romney’s.
CM: We did, we asked him the same question, but here’s the question. This is a strange phenomenon because remember, you’re making historic comparisons today and I love that.
CM: Jimmy Carter is another one, he ran against 4 liberals back in 1976 and he won nomination but was never really the hero of his party. . Same thing. Romney’s running against a number of conservatives, including yourself, Santorum, Rick Perry – different kinds of conservatives and he’s splitting the conservative vote. 75% of your party, through polling, wants a conservative [nominee] but not Mitt Romney. But you’re dividing that up. The Same way the liberals were with Jimmy Carter.
NG: Look as a real practitioner of this game, this is the year that you have the longest proportional representation and therefore he’s never going to get more than 25 of 30 percent of the delegates until April. By April, I think it will be Gingrich vs. Romney and at that point he is going to lose.
CM: So you can deny him majorities up until then?
NG: i think so and I don’t think he’ll ever get Florida
CM: What do you think he will get up here?
NG: Well, he was at 41 this afternoon and I think he’ll be very lucky if he’s at 41
CM: Okay, let me ask you about the quandary you are in. It’s almost like Chinese handcuffs or trying to bang your way out of a paper bag. You have a lot of common interests with Santorum ...in fact; I don’t think you dislike him in any way. I don’t think there’s any personal problem. You call him now, your junior partner, okay – well, that’s a knock. You have to hit him a little, you have to check him…how are you going to be the alternative to Romney unless you check him out of the fight?
NG: I think it will happen. People are going to look and make a judgment over the next few months. Maybe I won’t be the judgment but my hunch is I will be. We have a national campaign and we’re organized to compete in a lot more places. I wasn’t trying to knock [Santorum.] He’s a good guy; I was the Speaker of the House. He was a senator who had no leadership at that point. He did some very significant things. He was key to passing welfare reform. I scheduled it three times. I’m just saying, we could go through these kinds of games….
CM: You got Clinton reelected
NG: Well I created an opportunity for Bill Clinton to decide to sell out the left. It was a wonderful moment.
CM: I know you did. Your politics I don’t agree with you with, but its good politics. We’ll see how welfare reform works out. You said there is more than an election at stake here. Talking to tea party group on Thursday night, you said it’s you have to make real changes about winning general election. It’s about going in there and really making a systematic change and the structure of government and reduce and refine it, dramatically. And then of course, you’re going to have to face the old world, me included, who really won’t like the way things are...or at least too lazy to think about it. That requires a big radical challenge. Can Mitt Romney do it?
NG: No.
CM: Who else can do it besides you?
NG: The only reason I am running is I don’t think anyone else can do it - this is really hard - the kind of stuff you write about – the ability first to win and to win with majority that executes its will and is persistent. This is the kind of the thing happens very seldom.
CM: You know, I like a couple things and I want to talk about the 75% thing, which is a phenomenon to me. There’s something like, I was comparing it to – I’m an old movie nut – but Casablanca, where the roulette table kept coming up at 22 and I kept looking at Romney’s numbers and it’s always about there. For a long time, it was about 22 or 23 on election night. What is it about your party that solidifies the 75% against Romney? Why did the 75% reject him?
NG: He’s a Massachusetts moderate. A Massachusetts moderate and he’s not even willing to be honest about it. They all know who is his - he just hopes they don’t. So he goes around and says “I’m really conservative” – well they just think…
CM: How’s the Tea Party accept it when they know, he will never go in his life, to a tea party meeting. Maybe’s there’s a class difference? There’s all kind of reasons why Mitt Romney wouldn’t show
NG: - that’s why he’s not going to get their vote.
CM: You said you’re up against an amateur conservative and an amateur moderate. Who are these people? Want to put their names on it? The amateur conservative is? Rick Santorum?
NG: Well when you’re talking about trying to create a national majority…
CM: [Santorum] is an amateur? Who are you talking about when you say amateur conservative? You must be talking about Rick Santorum?
NG: Yes, Rick Santorum
CM: The amateur moderate, just to nail it down is…
NG: Mitt Romney
CM: Okay, so you’re going to be the one that will take the last stand against Mitt Romney?
NG: Yes, I think so.
CM: I think some good things happened to you as Speaker – I can be as tough on you as anybody but I did think something interesting happened
NG: By the way, you have been [tough on me] on occasion
CM: I want to ask you about something important. When you’re not being [inaudible], when you’re really being a good positive public servant, you do compromise. You and Clinton in the 90s brought the budget down to balance and surplus – a combination of a moderate liberal and a pragmatic conservative put together a country that worked. You did deal with welfare reforms. You did reduce the deficit; you did have a five percent or lower unemployment rate. This country was working. What went wrong? Because you were a match of wits for a while
NG: Well, a couple of things. We were very fortunate, were both policy wonks. We both placed country above ourselves. We were both willing to endure each other and we both take enormous amount of time to
We were both very experienced. He had been governor for 12 years. I had been studying this stud since 1950. I think we went into a period of harsh partisanship– which I think was wrong
CM: You were a part of it?
NG: No, this was after I left. If you look at the attitude of …
CM: Let’s talk about 2001. The attitude of swift boating and some of the tactics
NG: Yea and the attitude of the guys like Tom DeLay, which was a take no prisoners. You know you can’t lead a free society in a harshly partisan way. That’s what Pelosi and those guys just found out on their side. When you burn your all of your bridges, you leave every independent and every Democrat on the other side or you leave all the Independents and all of the Republicans on the side. Whoever burns the bridges has isolated themselves. In the long run, that’s a bad policy. And frankly, the Bush people and the Republicans in the congress made a huge mistake. Bush decided he wouldn’t veto anything from the Republican congress - and the Republican congress said they wouldn’t investigate anything stupid in the Executive Branch. That was their deal.
CM: How did you learn about that?
NG: Well I was told early on there were conversations about if we pass it, you sign it
CM: What about the other side? No investigations?
NG: Well. That’s the way they operate. This is a lose-lose because the legislative branch needs to constantly stay on the back of the bureaucracy. The President has to check the excesses of the Congress, even of his own party. And I thought that set up the 2001…
CM: And the spending disaster of the early part of this century? And that horrible…
NG: That’s right. Presidents have to pose their will on the constitution. And Congress needs to impose their will on the constitution. And that’s the process that makes it right. Or least a good government.
CM: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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*MANDATORY CREDIT: MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”*
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