Written by Ethan Greenberg
Colorado College and the Colorado Springs community turned out in impressive numbers to hear former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speak. The talk was the sixth event of the Sondermann Presidential Symposium and featured the largest and most boisterous crowd of any of the previous speakers.
The audience featured an interesting combination of CC students as well as a sizeable contingent of Colorado Springs residents. The contrast between the two groups could be seen in their applause. Following a conservative-leaning comment, the Colorado Springs residents would offer their support, and following a liberal-leaning comment, the student section clapped.
Despite this divide, Gingrich provided ample humor to lighten the mood. He joked about “low energy Jeb” and that Jeb Bush attempted to go jogging in New Hampshire to show he was high energy. He also poked fun at Bernie Sanders for offering free college and legalized marijuana at college campuses. “Newt was very good at appealing to the crowd,” said junior Jared Russell.
Gingrich brings extensive political experience to the table. He served in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1999, including as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999. He may be best known for his involvement with the Republican Party’s Contract with America, which formulated 10 policies that the Republican Party would rally around if it won midterm elections in 1994. The 1994 election was extremely successful for Republicans and Gingrich received much of the credit. Gingrich is also known for the 1995-96 government shutdown over budget disagreements between Congressional Republicans and President Clinton.
He ran for president in 2012, but eventually endorsed Mitt Romney. Before politics, Gingrich spent time in academia, receiving a doctorate in European History from Tulane University and teaching at West Georgia College. Like a true history teacher, Gingrich pegged historical predecessors for both Clinton and Trump. He compared Clinton to Richard Nixon and Trump to Andrew Jackson.
Gingrich began his political analysis by dissecting the worldwide mood trending against corruption and political insiders. “I thought his portrayal of current events and world events, the lead up to the election on both sides of the nominating process, was very poignant,” said senior Drew Turley.
He led the crowd on a tour from Indonesia to Iceland to Italy, exploring the recent global trends in political sentiments. While he did not mention Donald Trump during this analysis, the parallels between elections in other countries and the current election in the U.S. was unmistakable.
Before discussing the current general election, Gingrich focused on the primaries. He attributed Trump’s rise to a combination of factors. First, he cited Trump’s ability to capitalize on working class frustration with Republican party leaders and Washington politics in general.
Gingrich also credited Trump’s expertise with television as instrumental to his success. Gingrich spoke about the divide between intellectuals and the working and middle class.
To symbolize this divide, Gingrich noted that none of the political experts who doubted Trump at the beginning of the primary season had watched the Apprentice, despite its ranking as the most popular TV show at one point.
The divide was also apparent in the reactions to some of Trump’s controversial comments, including ridiculing John McCain and Megyn Kelly. “If you were a college-educated, highly sophisticated person, this all [the comments] made you very nervous,” said Gingrich. “But if you were a normal, blue-collar working, high school graduate or less, this was cool.”
Gingrich walked a tight line regarding Trump’s more controversial aspects. While he undoubtedly supports Trump, he made clear he did not agree with all of Trump’s remarks. He called the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump discusses groping women, “disgusting,” and did not shy away from calling many of Trump’s statements “stupid.” Gingrich even coined a term for such comments—he distinguished inappropriate comments as “Little Trump” in comparison to his positive potential as “Big Trump.” “What I did appreciate most was that he didn’t own everything that Trump has said over the course of the election,” said Russell. “I appreciated that because too often the right has embraced everything that Trump has been saying and I think that it is something that has not been beneficial to them in this election cycle.”
Though Gingrich spent more time on the Republican primary than the Democratic primary, he still offered his opinions on the Clinton-Bernie race. Gingrich asserted that Clinton has been running for president since the 1970s and has worked very hard towards that goal. The only possible opponent was someone “irrational” like Bernie Sanders “who had nothing to lose” and who could offer an inspirational campaign.
Gingrich said he views Clinton’s email scandal as a lesson in Americans’ “relentless hostility towards secrecy.” Gingrich expressed incredulity at Clinton’s mistakes despite the fact that she served on the Watergate committee as a young lawyer.
The questioning period sparked some rowdiness in the crowd. Gingrich’s answer on climate change may have drawn the most criticism from the student section. Gingrich said that Republicans are “very skeptical and not inclined to… set up systems to transfer wealth to the third world in the name of scientific theory.” He also said that climate change is not the largest threat to America; instead, terrorist organizations represent the largest danger.
The other question that garnered heavy reaction was a question about the Access Hollywood video. First-year Zachary Glosser asked Gingrich to respond without talking about Bill Clinton, to which Gingrich responded that we would have a sexual predator in the East Wing of the White House should Clinton win the election.
Some were not satisfied with the responses Gingrich gave. “Particularly on things like the issue of character, he just ignored the questions,” said Colorado Springs resident Dave Anderson. “I felt he chose to answer the party line.” Because of the ubiquity of cellphones, “he can never be off the record. And so he has to maintain his brand.”
“I would have loved him to talk more about his ideas about marginalized people in the U.S.,” said junior Sabre Morris. “I think he focused more on the demographic we have in Colorado Springs, which is more elderly, white.”
Gingrich for his part embraced the questioning period. In a post-speech interview, he said, “I think it’s a good dialogue, hopefully all of us can be positive about it, we don’t have to agree with each other. You know, you can disagree without being disagreeable… They were legitimate and serious questions and people were really engaged.”
Towards the end of the talk, Gingrich offered his prediction of a Trump win. But whatever the result of the election, Gingrich said, “the cheerful news for the people who like history is that we will make more of it.”