Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Republicans have a huge opportunity to pick up votes among every group of voters in the 2016 election by emphasizing a commitment to the working class.
“I think it’s very important to look at what just happened in Great Britain where the Conservative Party won a stunning upset victory and they did it by emphasizing jobs, the economy and by talking about working Britons,” Gingrich said in an interview with PJ Media after his Sunday appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“I think a Republican Party, which emphasizes a commitment to working Americans, has a huge opportunity to break through literally every group in the country,” he added.
Gingrich said both Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) have an advantage over the other candidates in the race when it comes to outreach to Hispanic voters.
“I think both Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have a huge advantage in being able to go on Spanish language media and talk with fluency and have an impact. There’s no question that’s an advantage,” he said. “You also saw in 2014, a number of Republican candidates do remarkably well in the Latino community by emphasizing jobs and education and issues that resonated with Latinos.”
Gingrich, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate, was asked if he thinks Republicans would be able to garner more Latino support while taking a stronger stance than Democrats on illegal immigration.
“You had Senator Cornyn actually carry a plurality of Hispanics in Texas. You had Cory Gardner tie the incumbent Senator Udall in Colorado among Hispanics,” he said. “You’ve seen a number of places, when Republicans focus, they do very well, of course with people like Susanna Martinez, she dominates the Hispanic vote in New Mexico.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised $3 million in four days for his presidential campaign. Sen. Sanders was asked how he plans to compete with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign on fundraising. The former New York senator is expected to raise $2.5 billion.
“I think we’re going to get a lot of our contributions from middle-class working families who are not going to give us $1 million but will give us $50 or $60, and in the first week we’re doing pretty good,” Sanders said.
Gingrich also commented on the Clinton campaign’s fundraising goal.
“Look, I just think you could run a campaign that says, ‘America’s Not For Sale,’ and I think she would be hard put to explain what she’s doing,” he said.
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