RED MIRAGE: This mega MAGA Republican just admitted major defeat

RED MIRAGE: This mega MAGA Republican just admitted major defeat

The midterm elections were not the “red wave” that conservative leaders predicted, and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says this is evidence that it’s time for Republicans to reassess.

Gingrich, a Republican who served in the House in the ’90s, appears frequently on conservative media to offer political commentary and analysis. The 2020 midterms, however, did not come out the way that he expected, and now he’s calling for the party to figure out what went wrong, and make changes.

He began election day with lofty predictions, sharing articles that assured a “massive Republican victory,” and retweeting forecasts of not just a “red wave” but a “red tsunami.” Even in the afternoon, as exit polls showed higher-than-expected Democratic enthusiasm, he declared an expectation of “a lot more [GOP wins] to come.”

By Wednesday morning, he was singing a different tune. He described the night’s outcomes — which included wins by several prominent Republicans, but not the massive numbers of flipped seats that party leaders were boasting — as a “red trickle.” That’s a significant downgrade from a tsunami.

From his Wednesday morning Fox News appearance:

It was certainly a different night than I had predicted…We lost some races we thought we’d win…The red wave, at most, has become sort of a red trickle. I have to confess, I thought it would be a much bigger Republican night than it was…I think for Republicans this may be as big a time to reassess and look at things as it is for Democrats.

That’s a big shift from Tuesday morning, when Gingrich retweeted a post from Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, declaring the sunrise a sign of an oncoming “red tsunami.”

[Screenshot via Twitter]
Before the close of polls on Tuesday, Gingrich celebrated the first win of the day: a GOP delegate from Guam. He declared it was the first of many to come.

By the time Gingrich spoke on Wednesday morning, there was indeed a list of GOP wins, but both House and Senate — which some sources had predicted as nearly sure-things for massive right-wing takeovers — were still up in the air, and Republicans had suffered some significant and unexpected losses.

Stephanie Bazzle

Steph Bazzle is a news writer who covers politics and theocracy, always aiming for a world free from extremism and authoritarianism. Follow Steph on Twitter @imjustasteph. Sign up for all of her stories to be delivered to your inbox here: