Newt Discusses Pennsylvania's Primary & Obama's Comments

Hannity’s America
Fox News
April 18, 2008

HANNITY: The Pennsylvania primary is just days away. So will Barack Obama's bitter comment hurt him at the polls or are the controversial remarks behind him? I asked former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, just that.

And the author of the "New York Times" best seller "Real Change," Mr. Speaker, welcome back to the program. Glad to have you on HANNITY'S AMERICA.

NEWT GINGRICH,"REAL CHANGE" AUTHOR: FMR. SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Glad to be with you. Glad to be here.

HANNITY: All right. Well, let's look ahead a little bit to Tuesday night especially in light of, for example, the debate, the discussion about William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist, and more specifically the comments in San Francisco.

What do you think this means for Hillary? Do you think she can come back by winning big in Pennsylvania on Tuesday?

GINGRICH: Well, she could come back. I think she has a couple of challenges. One is that, you know, she had her own mistakes with the Bosnian sniper story that turned out not to be true. And I think she's also caught up in a situation where her negatives are coming back to hurt her, so it's not just all on his side but both of them have problems.

The other thing is I was told today that she is outspending -- or rather, Obama is outspending here about three to one. And that's a very heavyweight of advertising on the other side. On the other hand, she does have Governor Ed Rendell who's very popular and has the state political organization behind him. So my personal guess is that she'll probably end up beating Obama but more like 54-46 or 53-47. Not by 10 or 12 or 15 points.

HANNITY: Well, that's probably not going to be enough. And she's probably not going to win North Carolina. Probably not going to win a state like Oregon. And she really needs some very decisive victories for her to have any chance to win the popular vote or the delegate count, right?

GINGRICH: Absolutely. And I think if she loses North Carolina, then I think she's in real trouble because it's pretty hard to see how she ever plays catch-up. What she was hoping for, and we'll learn, I guess, late Tuesday night, is she's hoping to hit him really hard in Pennsylvania to get close in North Carolina, and then win in Indiana and North Dakota, and somehow pull out a victory in Oregon.

But I don't sense that happening for her. I think part of it was because her own mistakes have kind of offset his mistakes and both of them are a little more battered than they were, say, a month ago.

HANNITY: Yes. One of the things we've been discussing a lot about here, and Scott Rasmussen in his polling has been showing this, and that is that the controversies over Barack Obama, and that's the number one liberal in the Senate, his wife's comments, the San Francisco comments, Bill Ayers, Million Man March, Jeremiah Wright, that they don't seem to hurt him in the Democratic nominating process, but he says in the general election it is going to have a massive impact.

Do you -- well, how -- if you are advising Senator McCain, how should he, quote, "politically take advantage of these controversies"?

GINGRICH: Well, we`ve been down this road before. Senator McGovern looked very formidable on the left and then was crushed in 1972. Senator Mondale, Vice President Mondale looked very formidable, was actually ahead of Reagan in the spring, and then was crushed in the general election.

HANNITY: Yes.

GINGRICH: Governor Dukakis was up 19 points and end up losing by six. So we've been at this road before. The left wing of the Democratic Party, frankly, kind of admirers American terrorists. They don't mind at all that Farrakhan is anti-Semitic. They shrug off Jeremiah Wright.

HANNITY: Right.

GINGRICH: You know? But I think.

HANNITY: And by the way, they are bitter, clinging to their guns, clinging to religion, having antipathy toward people that they disagree with. That -- the average Americans will respond.

GINGRICH: They all agree with that.

HANNITY: What?

GINGRICH: Yes. But if you're on the left wing of the Democratic Party, you agree with all of that. So you want to know what the issue is. The average American, on the other hand, particularly independents and maybe dissatisfied Republicans who are looking for an excuse, both of those groups, I think, are taking a new look at Senator Obama. And this could be doing very real damage to him in the general election.

HANNITY: You know, there has been one Democrat that has been admonishing his own party and he has been reminding them to go back to the tradition of FDR, Truman, JFK, Scoop Jackson, and that's Senator Joe Lieberman. And he's been warning the Democrats they have been co-opted by the hard left.

Are we seeing it in examples like this? That there's nothing -- no comment, no controversy, no association that Barack Obama can have that is going to change their opinion of him?

GINGRICH: Well, I think these true believers, the ones, who are the two million donors which is an amazing achievement, I suspect there is virtually nothing you can say that's going to move them. The problem for the Democrats is that isn't a big enough base to win an election.

HANNITY: Yes.

GINGRICH: And the question that they are about to face is that where he was untouchable six or eight weeks ago, it's becoming pretty OK to raise real questions about his character, about.

HANNITY: Yes.

GINGRICH: .whether or not he tells the truth, et cetera. And that wasn't true six weeks ago.

HANNITY: Last question: if you were Senator McCain -- because I always believing on offense -- would you run ads about these controversies we're discussing?

GINGRICH: Not until after the Democratic convention. I mean, there's an old Woodrow Wilson rule, never murder a man who's in the process of committing suicide. You got these two Democrats beating each other up, running ads against each other. I'm not so sure, I think John McCain ought to be presidential. He ought to advocate real change, he ought to be out there doing the right things.

But I think he ought to let the Democrats stay down in the mud while he's up here in a positive clean way offering an optimistic future.

HANNITY: Mr. Speaker, thanks for being on HANNITY'S AMERICA.

GINGRICH: Great to be with you.

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Comments

By mgsjake @ Wednesday, May 14, 2008 7:38 PM

No one will ask a simple question---which is: "Why did Barry Sortero, while in college and politically active, choose to change his name to Barack Hussein Obama ?" Did he think a Saudi king or an Iraqi murderer would help his career ?

By Gatorwest @ Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:56 AM

It’s beyond “guns & religion”.

This speech is unbelievable. Obama vows to Kill all military system development. It’s a good thing Obama wasn’t around to kill the B2, cruise missiles, partiots, and all the other weapons system we now depend upon to keep the animals away!

Why isn’t anyone doing a story on this? These are the Obama words that should be a huge factor in the National campaign, right up there with: “you guys cling on to your guns and religion”!

The Nation won’t like this either! Check it out:

http://www.crosstabs.org/stories/elections/2008/foreign_relations_090_for_senator_barack_obama_d_il

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