Newt Gingrich: Tulsi Gabbard’s Departure Is Bad News for Democrats

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (C) prior to the start of the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. John Moore/Getty Images

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested that Tulsi Gabbard’s announcement that she’s leaving the Democratic Party is a sign that more will depart.

“I think when she ran for president, she realized how really isolated she was from the great majority of the Democratic Party, which is now, frankly, a pretty weird party,” Gingrich told Fox News on Tuesday. “We saw the same thing happen in a slightly different way in Philadelphia last week, where the former deputy mayor, a Democrat, endorsed Dr. [Mehmet] Oz for the U.S. Senate and said that John Fetterman is just so crazy on crime and so pro-criminal, he couldn’t be for him.”

Gingrich, who was House speaker from 1995 to 1999, added that he believes there is a “drift” away from the Democratic Party because “we’ve certainly seen among Latinos a huge drift towards the Republican Party as they’re driven away by the weirder policies of the Democratic Party.”

Gabbard, a Democrat 2020 presidential candidate, did not announce her next move, including whether she would join the GOP. However, New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, a Republican, wrote Wednesday that Gabbard will be stumping for him.

The reason why she is leaving the Democratic Party, according to Gabbard, is because it represents the “powerful elite,” not normal people.

Then-Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard speaks in New Hampshire in a file photograph. Scott Eisen/Getty Images

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue [and] stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith [and] spirituality, [and] demonize the police [and] protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans” Gabbard wrote on Twitter.

When she was one of the Democratic presidential contenders in the crowded 2020 field, Gabbard touted herself as an Iraq War veteran and promoted a non-interventionist foreign policy platform. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview that she was being groomed to run as a third-party candidate and strongly suggested she was a “Russian asset,” although she didn’t specifically name the former Hawaii congresswoman.

Later, Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit against Clinton that she ultimately dropped in 2020. After suspending her presidential campaign, Gabbard endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential bid, although she’s become sharply critical of his policies.

“President Biden campaigned on a message of unity, healing the partisan divide, bringing the country together. He just gave a big speech saying supporters of President [Donald] Trump are the most extremist group in our country and a threat to our democracy,“ she said Tuesday. ”That’s half the country.”