Gingrich warns Freedom Caucus to study its era as conservatives issue demand letter after Johnson vote

Former speaker Newt Gingrich, who led Republicans to their first House majority in four decades in 1994, said Saturday that the House Freedom Caucus should remember how his own caucus brought conservatives to power within the party.

Gingrich tweeted that he and other conservatives had developed “principles of affirmative action” in 1983 as part of what they called the Conservative Opportunity Society.

“(They) led 11 years later on the Contract with America and the first GOP House majority in 40 years.”

“If the Freedom Caucus studied them, they could be dramatically more effective,” Gingrich said, going on to quote and agree with a sentiment from political reporter Mark Halperin’s “Wide World of News” newsletter.

“The Freedom Caucus is a group of rebels with a range of causes but no coherent path to achieve those causes,” Halperin wrote.

In the 1980s, even though Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Democratic Boston Speaker Tip O’Neill exercised strong control of the House. O’Neill and Reagan had a remarkably friendly but ideologically disparate relationship.

Coinciding with the early days of C-SPAN’s live televised events, Gingrich often took to the House floor in the afternoon and addressed conservative issues to a mostly empty chamber, but with a captive audience on the new television format. .

GINGRICH BLASTS HARRIS’ “DRAWING” SPEECHES

Gingrich biographer Craig Shirley told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the Freedom Caucus should study the work of its comparative predecessor, the Conservative Opportunity Society, as well as the path Gingrich led from a congressman down profile up to a speaker.

“I guess the word brilliant gets thrown around so, so wildly. So let me say it, it was an extremely smart policy to defend a conservative government,” Shirley said of Gingrich’s work in the eighty and ninety

“Reagan had already blazed this trail eight years before Gingrich did.”

While critics say the GOP has moved far to the right on some issues and softened on others, Shirley said it’s essentially the same as it was during Gingrich’s rise.

“Less government, more freedom, less taxes, strong national defense, pro-life.”

ancient string Weber wineR-Minn., another prominent member of Gingrich’s conservative caucus, said in a PBS interview that there haven’t been too many groups like the Conservative Opportunity Society (or the Freedom Caucus, which hadn’t been formed at the time of the interview). ) and that there was the same problem with apprehension to anger his party leaders.

Weber said there had been a few small conservative intra-caucus groups before the Reagan era, including one in the 1960s led by then-Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill. – who would go on to serve as Pentagon chief twice.

On the last day of the 1982 session, Gingrich approached Weber and asked, “What are you going to do next year and for the next 10 years after that?”

“I thought it was interesting and said, ‘I hope to come back here, but nothing special other than that,'” Weber recalled.

“What he was saying was that he, as a single person, was not being effective … He identified me at the (GOP) conference as someone (who) had supported his point of view and maybe had some ability to organize things,” Weber said.

MIKE JOHNSON IS RE-ELECTED SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE

Shirley said the current Freedom Caucus has a rare chance to achieve its goals if it plays its cards right, with full Republican control of Washington.

“They don’t have a ‘contract,’ but they have the next best thing. They have a set of core themes and an ideology that they can easily follow,” he said, adding that “no one should ever doubt” the president. Mike Johnson’s commitment to “Reaganite” principles.

In additional comments on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Gingrich said Friday’s runoff vote was a “big win” for Johnson, R-La.

“(He’s) just a decent, hard-working, intelligent human being. … He couldn’t have been the kind of speaker that he is. I don’t have the patience. I don’t have that ability to keep going. He’s really quite extraordinary.”

Meanwhile, Member of the Freedom Caucus Ralph Norman, RSC, told Fox News that the group met with Johnson earlier and “didn’t come away feeling like the ‘umph’ or the willingness to fight for Trump’s agenda was there.”

“And I use as a backdrop what’s happened in the last 14 months, we had 1,500-page omni-bills that you couldn’t read, where you didn’t have spending cuts to offset $100 billion in new spending.”

“And I know we had a small majority, but that’s over. What we wanted to impress upon (Johnson) yesterday was, are you going to fight for these things that we’ve been asking for, like a balanced budget? offsets? How do you get behind of Trump’s whole agenda?”

Norman, along with Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, initially did not vote for Johnson, which would have set up a second round of speaker votes.

But Norman told “The Story” that action was the “only way to let my voice be heard.”

He said Johnson “gave his word” to fight for the things he mentioned on Fox News, and that this deal, along with a message from Trump that Johnson was the only candidate for speaker with caucus support, guided his decision to support Louisianan.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter released Friday, the House Freedom Caucus Speaker Andy Harris, R-Md., and its members expressed several policy points that Johnson should commit to in order to “reverse the damage of the Biden-Harris administration” as well as achieve long-standing conservative goals.

The letter said they had voted for Johnson because of his “strong support” for Trump and to make sure the Jan. 6 voter certification can run smoothly.

“We did this despite our sincere reservations about the president’s track record over the past 15 months.”

The caucus called on Johnson to reschedule the House so that its schedule is as busy as the Senate’s, ensure that reconciliation legislation reduces spending and deficits in “real terms” and stop violations of the “72-hour rule” for debate on bill amendments.

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They also demanded Johnson not rely on Democrats to pass legislation that a majority of his own caucus won’t support.

In comments to “The Story,” Norman said he believes Johnson now understands — through the initial silence of several Republicans during the first call and the initial no vote by Johnson and Self — that he will have to work to consider the bloc. conservative demands