“Democrats are running two big gambles in the way they are responding to what is a legitimate move,” Newt told “Fox & Friends” on Monday regarding how they are reacting to the potential of filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year.
Transcript:
Newt Gingrich
Fox and Friends
Sep. 21, 2020
NEWT:
I think the Democrats are running two big gambles in the way they are responding to what is a legitimate move. After all, in 2016, it was Justice Ginsburg who said it was totally appropriate for a president to nominate and the Senate to confirm a justice during an election year. So, they can simply — Republicans can go around and quote Justice Ginsburg’s own statements from four years ago. But the Democrats have two challenges. One which Nancy Pelosi just exemplified is they are going to get more radical, more frantic, you are going to see more crowds showing up at Senators’ houses and trying to intimidate people. You are going to talk about packing the court in the future. There will be sort of a frenzy because the truth is that they’re powerless. Yes, the president nominates the people that we’re looking at. They are people of faith and the Democrats have to be very careful when they have somebody like Kamala Harris who is as anti-Catholic as openly anti-Catholic as she is to not get involved in an antireligious thing. Second, I think the real question is can Mitch McConnell find 50 votes. If he can, there is nothing the Democrats can do to stop justice from being approved.
NEWT:
Well, first of all, I’m not at all sure that it motivates Democrats in the end more than Republicans. Remember, the fight over Justice Kavanaugh where people — where the Democrats are so vicious and so dishonest and so personal in their attack on him and his family that led to the defeat of four democratic senators. So, I wouldn’t assume, for example, that Peters in Michigan is safe if he decides to vote against somebody who is a Notre Dame professor and has a solid background if, in fact, Barrett is the one who is chosen. I don’t automatically assume that this is a winning issue for them. I think right now they are in frenzy and they are all exciting but whether or not a week from now or two weeks from now that’s the central issue, I think it will make the debate between Trump and Biden very interesting. To have Biden explain why in 16 he was for what he is now against, et cetera. Interesting to see if he can actually carry out and think through that entire line without losing his track.
NEWT:
Well, I think this is why I think they have to walk a very careful line they can’t come across as the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, antireligious belief party. And there is a grave danger of that because the national instinct of the secular Democrats is to be very hostile to the Catholic Church and to evangelicals and to conservative Jews. Because their views are so dramatically different. And I think it’s having that highlighted in the last weeks of the campaign. If you look at a place like Michigan or Minnesota or as you point out, Florida, that may not be the most clever thing Democrats can do.