A VP Nominee to Unite the GOP: Gingrich

Trump has the potential to mop the floor with Hillary

Trump is simply much, much better at being nasty than Hillary is.   A lot of voters see him as being a strong truth-teller when he attacks.  Little Marco, Lyin' Ted, Weak Bush: those insults all worked.  Hillary looks bitchy when she attempts a milder version of the same thing.    It is utterly unfair to Hillary.  It is unfair to women.  But that is how it is working out.

It took place right in front of us.   We watched Trump demolish some 16 well qualified opponents by demeaning them, calling them names, making accusations based on National Enquirer standards of truth, and he was successful doing it.   

The Chamber of Commerce/Civic Minded/Rotarian/College Graduate Republicans of my acquaintance are uncomfortable with Trump.  But most of them will end up supporting him.   They will unify under the Stop Hillary banner.   Republicans have been habituated to disliking Hillary: elderly viewers watch Fox; Boomers who experienced the 8-year investigations of Whitewater, Vince Foster's suicide, Travelgate, and the impeachment remember endless controversy; young people were introduced to Hillary by  Sanders' description of her as a lackey of Wall Street.   Stopping Hillary is nearly enough.

Republican opponents of Trump need to find an identifiable excuse to change their minds.  Republicans had 9 months to scoff at Trump and are trapped by their own words.  They told family and friends that Trump is a joke and would be a disaster.   They need a reason to say they changed their mind on Trump himself.   Trump needs to pick a VP candidate they can point to.

Kasich in Medford

There are two reasonable directions.   Kasich is one.  I have written about Kasich, the person who presented himself as the experienced, competent grown up.   He takes credit for balancing the budget.   He has experience in Congress and as a Governor. Kasich has been vetted by being the in the public eye.   He has pledged delegates of his own.   Kasich would give cover to those Main Street civic-minded people on the record for disliking Trump to now put a Trump bumper sticker on their SUV because they now agree Trump is safe and reasonable.   

Which would be, simultaneously, the problem with the core Trump voter.   Trump-with-Kasich is demonstration that Trump was never really represented major change or re-alignment. Kasich represents the party of Mitt Romney, the old coalition.  It reassures the college educated constituency but represents a backtrack of the Trump brand and a betrayal of the white working class voters who are hoping for a new deal.

The second direction is Newt Gingrich.    Choosing Newt Gingrich would make a bold statement and bold statements are Trump's brand.   Newt loves slash and burn rhetoric and indeed helped teach candidates in his famous 1996 GOPAC memo to use it.  "Language," he said, "is a key mechanism of control used by a majority party."   He created tape recordings for people to listen to in their cars and homes to use as a guide because "we have heard a plaintive plea: 'I wish I could speak like Newt.'"  He suggested a list of words including:  pathetic, radical, self-serving, devour, disgrace, decay, bizarre.   These are not words of debate; they are words of delegitimization, which is the powerful Trump tactic which worked so well. 

Gingrich puts front and center the Clinton-era impeachment mess,  which complicates and muddles the Hillary "woman's card."   Better, for Trump, it re-introduces and elevates Monica Lewinsky, who re-emerged in the public eye as a spokesman against internet shaming, and it makes Hillary's role a matter of public debate.   When the mess hit the fan Hillary defended her marriage, not Monica Lewinsky and by extension all women who are enjoyed, then abandoned, by men.  

Gingrich can take political credit for the Grand Bargains between the Congress and White House during the Bill Clinton presidency, grabbing back the Peace-and-Prosperity glow of the Clinton years.   They were the Gingrich years, too, he can argue.

Not a mere affair.  He married her.

In campaign style and language Newt Gingrich is the strongest choice for Trump and the one that confirms that this is a choice between Hillary continuity and bold change in a Trump/Gingrich administration.   

Gingrich left the Speakership amid failure.   His hypocrisy amid his own affair was becoming known and the impeachment was perceived as partisan over-reach and destructive to good government.  Voters rejected that.  But the electorate has now changed and Republican voters are more comfortable with--indeed many are insisting upon--destroying orderly productive government so that it can be re-drawn from a libertarian trickle down coalition into a populist and authoritarian coalition.  GOP voters could have chosen order and continuity but rejected it in favor of Trump.

Powerful TED Talk by Monica Lewinsky

The Chamber of Commerce Rotary type Republicans will like the choice of Newt Gingrich and will conclude that Trump is now connected to a period of economic prosperity and government that worked, a period that was simultaneously disruptive and productive.   That will reassure them that Trump is solid-enough, even as Gingrich reassures the core Trump voters that Trump represents radical change.   Gingrich works both ways. Gingrich is the VP candidate who makes sense for Trump.

I predict a Trump/Gingrich ticket and a campaign that puts Monica Lewinsky back into the news because Monica Lewinsky is the way that Trump can neutralize his biggest electoral weakness, his female-voter problem.  Trump will attempt to position himself as the great defender of women abused by--to use the words that Gingrich recommends in describing Democrats-- the pathetic, self-serving, disgraceful, pathetic, and bizarre Bill and Hillary Clinton.  He and Gingrich will create a woman's card of their own and put Monica Lewinsky's face on it.