Who holds the power for the Democrats in Congress: Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Transcript:
America’s Newsroom
11/11/2020
NEWT:
Well, she certainly wields an enormous amount of power. Pelosi still has the power of the speakership, but I think it is declining. And I think as Biden comes out of the basement and we see more and more radical positions, the moderates are going to get very frightened. Look the history is very clear. Bill Clinton wins in 92 in 94 for the first time in 40 years we win control of the house. Obama wins in 2008 and in 2010, the house Republicans pick up 63 seats, the most in modern times. So if you are a moderate Democrat or even a fairly liberal Democrat but in a potential swing district you have to look at that history and you got to ask yourself are the radical members of the Biden administration combined with AOC and her allies, are they going to push you off the cliff and guarantee that 2022 becomes a disaster and you end up with speaker McCarthy, which is frankly the most likely outcome.
NEWT:
Well, I think it’s very divided and I think depending on the result of these last few seats that Republican leader McCarthy may actually have an ability to form an alliance with 10 or 12 Democrats who literally are in districts where they will get wiped out in 22 unless they find some way to separate. And if that happens, McCarthy actually will have more maneuvering ability on the floor than will speaker Pelosi. You get into these very narrowly contested houses in a time when the country is moving to the right and despite the presidential outcomes you look at the state legislators, you look at our picking up a governorship and you look at all the things happening around the country, you look at the results in various referendum, the country is not going to AOC. She may do fine in a tiny district in queens where she wins in a primary with 19% people voting but wiped out in most of the country.
NEWT:
Well there are two different questions. One is in terms of the house, one of the challenges in the house each member is elected by their district. So she may be personal fine for her district which is one of the poorest in the country. But she is going to be poison in most of the country. I think she will have no ability to know that because in her district she does great, so she goes back home and applaud, and she feels good about herself. She quoted somebody who got wiped out in Alabama. He is not a very good source of advice about elections for the Democrats. The other challenge as I said is as the Biden administration comes out of the basement the first real example is Zeke Emmanuel who is on his COVID task force who said publicly he doesn’t think you should spend much resources on people over 75, which is where most people have died from COVID and came out yesterday saying the U.S. ought to give away vaccine before Americans take it. We shouldn’t be vaccine nationalists we should be globalists and give it to everybody else on the planet. Let’s see how many Americans agree that one you shouldn’t take care of people over 75 and two we ought to give the vaccine away to everybody else before we get to take it. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg as they come out of the basement. He had a lot of people hidden down there who are very radical and I think frankly it is going to cost him the two seats to Georgia because the radicalism is going to show up.