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February 06, 2008

Gingrich & Brownback on "Hannity & Colmes"

Hannity & Colmes

COLMES: Welcome to HANNITY AND COLMES. It's the day after Super Tuesday and when American awoke this morning with a political hang over, the presidential race seemed as hazy as it did last night. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still locked in a dead heat, although there are reports today that the Clinton campaign is running short of money and Fox has confirmed that senior staffers are not getting paid because of that. And we'll have more on that with Kirsten Powers in just a few minutes.

On the Republican side, John McCain seems to be the front-runner, but neither Mike Huckabee nor Mitt Romney are completely dead politically. And tomorrow, McCain has to face the rotten fruit throwing conservatives at the annual CPAC conference in Washington, in what could be the most important speech of his political career. We'll also have more on that later in the show.

Joining us now is Fox News contributor, former speaker of the House, author of the "New York Times" best seller "Real Change," Newt Gingrich, who, of course, now likes the "New York Times" that's got his best seller. Mr. Speaker, not so bad, that "New York Times."

NEWT GINGRICH, AUTHOR "REAL CHANGE": Nice try, Alan. I like the page that has "Real Change." I don't particularly like the editorial page.

COLMES: You can't pick and choose. Let's get serious for a second. Are you surprised by what happened last night on either side of the political aisle?

GINGRICH: I don't know that I'm surprised because I went into it curious about what would happen. The only really big surprise to me was that in California you saw the impact of early voting, because my sense is that people who voted on election day were much more for Romney and for Obama, but that the number of votes that McCain and Clinton got before election day in absentee ballots, which are very big in California, really made a huge difference in the final outcome.

I guess the other surprise to me in California was that Obama actually carried both the white vote and the African-American vote. Senator Clinton survived by the Asian-American vote and the Latino vote, but lost both white and black voters to Senator Obama. That surprised me a little bit.

The other thing I'd say that I thought was a real surprise, I'm talking to you from Idaho, which is one of the states that Senator Obama carried. He did an amazing job of focusing on Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, a number of states, Alaska, where he was picking up, I thought, very impressively, caucus after caucus, in states that don't have a very large African-American population, but clearly liberal activist whites had decided that Obama was their future.

COLMES: What happens now? We've got a few primaries and caucuses coming up. The ones immediately seem to favor Obama. The ones after that, like Pennsylvania and Virginia, seem to favor Hillary Clinton. How do you project things going on the Democratic side?

GINGRICH: I think it's a terrifically good question, Alan. My sense is that the Clintons are faced with a life and death decision, in terms of their ambitions. They cannot win a normal campaign against Senator Obama. He is going to attract more money, more support, more energy, more enthusiasm. The momentum for him is growing, and if they don't find a strategy in the next two weeks to break up his momentum, I think he's going to become the Democratic nominee.

The first try they made in South Carolina was so clumsy and so tinged with racism that everybody piled on and forced President Clinton to pull back from that strategy. So I don't know what they're going to do, but I think if you look at today's numbers, for example, where I saw one report that Senator Obama had raised three million dollars today alone on the Internet, he's going to be wallowing in resources, and she is going to be running out of resources. And that's very dangerous for the former front- runner.

COLMES: Let me point out the Gallup tracking poll out today shows a significant bump for Hillary Clinton, with a 13-point lead nationally. Of course, that's nationally, and doesn't necessarily address the particular states that are coming up, but it seems like there is a swing toward Hillary Clinton in the daily tracking poll.

GINGRICH: There could be. If you remember how last night went, early in the evening you had both Senator McCain and Senator Clinton winning big states in the east and the eastern time zone, and then you gradually saw a rebalancing during the night on the Republican side. Governor Huckabee and Governor Romney gradually began picking up more and more states.

On the Democratic side, Senator Obama began picking up more and more states. But for the average viewer, I suspect they went to bed about 8:00 or 9:00, or 10:00 at the latest, thinking that Senator Clinton and Senator McCain were bigger winners than they in fact were by the end of the evening. And I think by the end of the evening, Senator Obama had actually psychologically won Super Tuesday.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Mr. Speaker, thank you for being here with us tonight. I agree, I think by far that Barack Obama is now officially the front-runner for the Democratic party, but I want to go over two issues with you here. Not only did he out raise her two to one in the month of January, he's on track to do it again this month. He raised three million dollars today. She had to loan her campaign five million dollars, and she still had about half of what he took in for the month of January.

He won 13 states yesterday. She won three. And after the final count, he won more delegates yesterday. He won -- he won the Super Tuesday primary by a pretty significant margin.

GINGRICH: Well, that's why I think that there's a real problem for the Clintons as a machine, because I think they thought they were going to -- and as you know, I all along thought they'd win. So I'm surprised.

HANNITY: I know, we talked about it.

GINGRICH: In all fairness, I'm amazed that they have not found an answer to Senator Obama. And I'm beginning to think they're not going to find an answer. And I do believe last night the breadth of his support in the caucus states was probably as important as anything else. It wasn't just that he was carrying a place like Delaware or Alabama or Georgia, where there's a substantial African-American vote. He was carrying states with virtually no African-American vote, and he was carrying them because the activist reformers were clearly decisively moving his way.

And the fact that in California he carried both the white and the African-American vote, if I were the Clintons, I'd be deeply worried about how this momentum is building.

HANNITY: I think Alan accurately points out that the next round of primaries, if we go down the list here, certainly favors Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. As a Republican that would rather not see Hillary in the White House, I think Barack Obama is a stronger candidate. He may be the most liberal senator last year in the United States Senate. I don't think that's going to be enough to overcome this wide spread enthusiasm that he's been able to garner along the path. Do you agree with that?

GINGRICH: Look, I think he may be the most likable, most liberal senator, and I think that's a very formidable -- that's a very formidable combination. You may get your wish of blocking Senator Clinton at the cost of elevating Senator Obama in a way that I don't think any of us could have imagined two years ago. This is a remarkable campaign. He deserves a great deal of respect. He has put together an amazing nationwide team.

HANNITY: If you were advising your friends, the Clintons, your old friends the Clintons, and if you were going to offer them any council or any advice on how to beat Barack Obama -- I mean, for example, we know the race issue that was played by Bill Clinton, eight in ten African-Americans voted for Obama. What advice would you give the Clintons right now?

GINGRICH: They better find three issues on which they can fundamentally disagree with Senator Obama, where his record is clear and his position is clear, that move Democratic primary voters. If they don't find something like that to draw a clear distinction in a positive way, not being negative, not being mean spirited, they're going to lose.

HANNITY: We'll have more with Newt when we get back. We'll ask him about John McCain's relationship with conservatives. And then Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in a virtual tie, so could the Democrats actually reach convention time with no clear winner? And what would that mean for the party? We'll break that down, more of our Super Tuesday post analysis coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: We continue with former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Let's talk about the possibility for the Democratic side that they're not able to decide or choose a nominee, and this goes all the way to the convention. You've got this question of Super Delegates, Mr. Speaker. Your thoughts.

GINGRICH: You have two big things. First, Senator Clinton won two primaries that currently have no delegates, Michigan and Florida. I can't imagine that Senator Obama is going to let her have those delegates without a huge fight.

Second, these political delegates, they're not Super Delegates. They're politician delegates. I can't imagine that if Senator Obama continues to win that they don't collapse and have to end up endorsing him, because you couldn't have the politicians as insiders thwarting the person who won all the primaries and caucuses, so I think that's going to melt down pretty rapidly.

HANNITY: Let me go to the Republican side, Mr. Speaker. I want you to analyze this and break this down, if you can here. I contend that both Governor Romney and Mike Huckabee are battling for the more moderate conservative wing of the Republican party. John McCain has an open field for the moderate liberal wing of the party. If you look at the numbers last night, Governor Romney won seven states, and five states for Mike Huckabee, and nine states for Senator McCain, but they were blue states for the most part, not states that are likely going to be in play for the Republicans come November.

Conservatives, 47-36 in Arizona, went Romney. Nationally, across the country, conservatives were not voting for Senator McCain. What does that mean for his candidacy should he become the nominee, this relationship with conservatives?

GINGRICH: Well, I think it's very important, and the speech at CPAC is going to be extraordinarily important. Senator McCain right now is in danger of becoming the candidate of the Dewey/Rockefeller wing of the party, successful candidate, but nonetheless, the candidate of the wing which has not had any kind of authority since 1964. If he doesn't find a way to build a bridge to the conservative movement, I think it will be very hard for him this fall to have a successful campaign, and I think --

I suspect that his staff and his consultants underestimate how deep this problem is and how deep the animosity is, and I think it could literally cost him the election.

HANNITY: And I want to delve into this more deeply. Is it that they're feeling where else are they going to go? What are conservatives going to vote for Hillary? There's a possibility they can stay home. But it's interesting, he's run the Straight Talk Express, but conservatives -- for example, I've been written about a lot, about my substance disagreements. It's not on personality. I like him personally, to be honest with you, Mr Speaker. But there are substantive disagreements with Senator McCain.

My question then becomes that if he thinks he can do it without conservatives, I would imagine some conservatives may stay home, which would not be good for him.

GINGRICH: Well, I think it's worse than that. If he communicates that he will govern as a pure centrist, I suspect he will find an amazing part of the country that -- conservatives turn and they focus on governor's races, Senate races, House races, they just ignore him. And this has happened before. And I think he should not underestimate that the conservative movement is a living, powerful system across the country. It has been historically since 1964 the most powerful single force in the Republican party.

He is currently winning the nomination to some extent on a fluke, great courage, great persistence, but without being able to re-unify the party. Tomorrow's his first opportunity to do that. And what I'll be curious about is I'm not sure that he has any sense of the rhythm of what it means to bring conservatives together.

COLMES: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, as you point out, he speaks to Conservative Political Action Committee. I've never gotten that invitation. I don't know what happened. I think it's lost in the mail. He's going to speak to them. The story is he's going to show a film about Ronald Reagan comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. Is that good or bad for John McCain to use that tactic and present himself as a successor to the Reagan legacy?

GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I'm speaking at CPAC on Saturday. You have my invitation. I'd be glad to have you come and be with me on Saturday. And I guarantee you will get a nice, pleasant reaction from some people, maybe not everybody.

I think this is, frankly, a mistake. Senator John McCain is not Ronald Reagan any more than I'm Ronald Reagan or Mitt Romney is Ronald Reagan or Governor Huckabee is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a unique historic figure, and I think that we all -- certainly Senator McCain and I when we were in the House together both tended to vote for President Reagan's programs.

I think what the conservative movement wants to hear from Senator McCain is pretty straight forward. What kind of cabinet are you going to appoint? What kind of policies are you going to follow? What kind of vice-president are you going to have? What's the Republican platform going to be like? And shmoozing us with Reagan films isn't going to get very far.

COLMES: Let me ask you this, he gets before CPAC and he sings from the conservative song book all of a sudden, and he says things that he previously hadn't said, and he comes around on certain issues where he hasn't been before. What believability is there at that point?

GINGRICH: Well, I don't think he has to come around where he hasn't been before. John McCain is not a left winger. He has a solid life-time conservative voting record that makes him a moderate conservative. He's been right on the Second Amendment most of the time. He's been right on right to life issues most of the time. A large part of this is attitude and tone. The fact that Steve Forbes endorsed him is a good sign. And I think he could offer a program conservatives might like.

COLMES: Mr. Speaker, I would be there, but my bullet proof vest is at the cleaners. But thanks very much for coming on our show tonight.

Coming up, with no Democratic candidate crowned the clear winner of Super Tuesday, are we heading towards a brokered convention? All that, plus, is the Clinton campaign truly strapped for cash, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLMES: -- Hillary Clinton because --

KIRSTEN POWERS, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I think the reason why people are looking at this is just because of the fund-raising numbers that came out last night, which was Obama raised 32 million dollars to her 13 million. When you start to look at that, people say what's going on here. Look, John Kerry self-financed during the primary. Granted, it was much, earlier. But he did do it, and he went on to become the nominee, and we know that John McCain also --

COLMES: This is a long battle. There are hills and battles.

POWERS: It doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that she's out of the race.

COLMES: And to those people who say it shouldn't be about money, it shouldn't be about the rich guy or the rich women gets to be the one who gets the nomination; they buy the nomination, everybody who says that should not be concerned then if somebody takes their own dollars and puts it in the campaign.

POWERS: People are concerned about it because people look at money as a judgment of the strength of the campaign. And at this point people are saying, can you raise money? Can you get new donors? Can you --

COLMES: There is a story -- supposedly she got a bump out of Super Tuesday. Whether that's going to do her any good immediately or in further primaries or caucuses, but the fact that the daily tracking poll shows that she did a little bit of a bump.

POWERS: With a 13-point --

COLMES: More than a little.

POWERS: -- which is a little hard to believe. But I wouldn't be surprised if she got a bump, because all the coverage last night or this morning was sort of leading you to believe that it was a draw or a Hillary win, when, in fact, Obama won more states and won more delegates --

COLMES: But she won the bigger states where there are more delegates.

POWERS: But it doesn't matter because Obama won more delegates.

(CROSS TALK)

POWERS: If people feel that she has momentum, that will be something in her corner in terms of trying to raise more money. It's a question of whether people see this as a draw or Obama being ahead.

HANNITY: With all good respect to Alan, he's getting this totally wrong.

COLMES: Oh, thank you. I've never heard you say that in 11 years.

HANNITY: He's missing the point on the money. Barack Obama online raised three million dollars today, 31 million dollars last night, on track to do the same thing or better this month. She raised 13.8, had to lend the campaign five. She's not paying poor Howard Wolfson, poor Howie.

POWERS: I'm friends with Howard. Don't attack Howard.

HANNITY: Poor Howard didn't get paid, along with some other Clinton supporters. You know what, that coupled with her losing the establishment support of her party, this is a meltdown for her. She lost 13 to eight in the states and lost the delegates last night. This is a meltdown.

POWERS: I'd have to say I'm somewhere in the middle on this. I think that the reality is that Obama did better than she did last night. That's indisputable.

HANNITY: He beat her in the first national primary. He beat her badly.

POWERS: And he's equal with her in overall voters and delegates. That's indisputable. She's not having a meltdown though. I don't know if I would go that far.

HANNITY: He's raising more money in a given day than she can raise in a week.

POWERS: That says a lot about Obama.

HANNITY: Yes, that's my point.

POWERS: But the point is, it doesn't mean that she's having a meltdown. It means that Obama is a person that's reaching out to new people --

HANNITY: We're heading into a scenario here where Hillary Clinton ought to be worried, because the states that are coming up now will favor Barack Obama in a pretty significant way over Hillary Clinton. Let me give you a quote from Michelle Obama. For all the talk about the conservatives having a battle with John McCain, she was asked if Senator Clinton defeated her husband and became the first woman nominee, could she support the first women for president? You know what her answer was? I'd have to think about supporting that. I'd have to think about that, her policies, her approach, her tone.

POWERS: I read that. I think there's a lot of bad blood between these campaigns, suffice it to say. And I'm sure if Hillary was the candidate that Michelle Obama would come around and support her. But I think -

COLMES: Let's talk about the love on the Republican side.

HANNITY: Kirsten, thank you very much.

(CROSS TALK)

HANNITY: For her to say she'd have to think about supporting her, she's not saying --

POWERS: I think there's a lot of bad blood between the campaigns.

COLMES: Unlike the Republicans.

HANNITY: But the Barack Obama campaign has delegates, states and money. Hillary's campaign is in trouble. Coming up, GOP front-runner John McCain is going to take the so called Straight Talk Express to CPAC at their convention tomorrow. So can the Arizona Republican win over conservative critics? Sam Brownback is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

HANNITY: And Super Tuesday is over, and Senator John McCain is looking more like he will be the Republican nominee for president. The Arizona Republican is scheduled to speak at tomorrow's CPAC convention, where he will attempt to win over a conservative base that is very reluctant about his getting -- well, getting in his corner.

Joining us now, campaign advisor, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback is with us.

Senator, I do think this is an opportunity for the Senator tomorrow. I thought Newt brought up some good points. Will he address issues about the vice-presidential choice he's looking for, the cabinet positions, the policies, the platforms? Will he go down that road?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS), MCCAIN SUPPORTER: I don't think he'll go on about vice-president or positions, but I do think he's going to put together the case as to why he's a conservative candidate. And I think this is a great forum. I think it's a great time for him to do it.

And he'll lay out his positions on life and the pro-life voting record that he's had, lay out his positions on the Second Amendment, lay out his positions on the war on terrorism, on securing the borders, on fiscal conservatism, what he'll do to grow this economy.

I think he's got the moment and he's got the place, I think, to deliver a very solid speech to the conservative group and also to the country. Here are issues he's going to push and things he's going to do.

HANNITY: You're a conservative. As quickly as I can, not only against the Bush tax cuts, quote, "They're tax cuts for the rich" that he made the point at the time.

McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, as we -- interrogations, against drilling in ANWR. Guantanamo, wants to shut it down. We're not talking about one or two issues. A significant pattern of aligning himself with liberal Democrats against his conservative base.

You certainly have got to understand where principal conservatives like myself are coming from. I like Senator McCain. I'll be honest. Personally, I've always liked him. I love his life's story, but these are real substance differences here, Senator.

BROWNBACK: They are real substance differences. I ran for president and tried to make those points...

HANNITY: Good point.

BROWNBACK: ... that I was the conservative candidate, that Fred Thompson was the conservative candidate, that a number of us were the conservative candidate. And yet you're seeing what's taking place, that people are looking, I think, mostly at the experience and character issues right now, saying this guy is ready to lead.

HANNITY: All right. But let me...

BROWNBACK: And I think also, Sean, they want -- they want somebody that can try to put things together to make things work and move forward.

HANNITY: I got that. I got that, but...

BROWNBACK: And that does cross-pressure our base.

HANNITY: But immigration and securing our borders, and -- and tax cuts, and the class warfare rhetoric. These are real significant differences.

And I've got to tell you something, Senator, it's showing up in the exit polls. And that is he's losing, in most states, the conservative vote. Even in his own state of Arizona, last night -- I know he won the state, but Governor Romney beat McCain among conservative voters, with those that describe themselves as conservative, 47 to 36 percent.

Headline, the Los Angeles Times, "McCain Lost Conservative Vote Again." It has been the entire pattern.

Now, maybe he's thinking, "Well, there's no other place for conservatives to go. They'll never vote for Hillary. They'll have to come to me." I'm not so sure that that would be a good strategy if there's not an outreach. I'm even making the argument...

BROWNBACK: That's my point.

HANNITY: I'm even making the argument that the conservative vote is split between Romney and Huckabee, which is paving the way for Senator McCain. Is that a good argument?

BROWNBACK: Well, I don't think it's an accurate argument, because I think Senator McCain is getting a portion of those conservative votes, as well. But a lot of that is from this point on forward now we should look.

And I think now Senator McCain has a real chance to reach out to conservatives and say, "Here is why you should get behind me."

COLMES: Senator Brownback...

BROWNBACK: And I think it should probably lead with the Supreme Court if nothing else and appointment of people like Roberts and Alito, because that's where the liberals, like Alan, have gotten us over so many years. That we keep moving back to the beginning...

COLMES: By the way, I defend McCain. I don't want him -- regardless of what our audience might think, I don't want him to be the nominee. I think it would be tougher for Democrats to beat. I'm a Huckabee guy. You know, so -- because that's who I'd rather face.

BROWNBACK: I thought you loved me, Alan. Come on.

COLMES: You -- I can't vote -- you're not in the race at the moment. But look, I don't understand this thing about John McCain, according to some, not being conservative enough. He has an American Conservative union rating of 82.3 percent. The things he stood up for, like the Gang of 14, resulted in the appointments of Alito, Roberts, Rogers, Brown and a bunch of others and maintained the filibuster.

He's anti-choice. He's pro war. He has been against Bush's $3.1 trillion budget. And the reason he's against the tax cuts, the Bush tax cuts, is he wanted to stop spending at the same time.

BROWNBACK: Alan, I think you ought to be in my seat. You're much better at this than what I am.

COLMES: No, I don't get it. Who do you have to be, Joseph Stalin? I mean, in order to get the conservative -- I mean, how conservative do you have to be?

HANNITY: Wait. I think you want to take that back. I'll give you every opportunity to refine and extend your remarks here, Mr. Colmes. It wasn't a funny one, but go ahead.

COLMES: Don't laugh at my joke. But I mean, how conservative do you have to be to get the approval of...?

BROWNBACK: I think that's probably the question and the thing that John McCain has to lay out there, is that, "Here are my conservative bona fides. And yes, I do cross-pressure the base on some of these issues that I've felt deeply about over the years."

I would think it actually would be good for him to -- to deal with some of those in an objective fashion, maybe on you guy's show, to talk about some of those things.

COLMES: What do you -- what do you want him to say at CPAC tomorrow? What does he need to say? And is he believable and credible, as I asked Newt Gingrich a little while ago, if he suddenly has a different tune than he's been singing up until now?

BROWNBACK: No, I don't think he needs to say a different tune. I think he needs to shoot more straight talk, like Sean was saying a little bit earlier. Issue the straight talk about, "Look, here is where I am, and here is where I've always been."

And I think he needs to really put a sharp point on the war with militant Islamic terrorists and on foreign policy, because those are the two things -- military leadership, commander in chief, foreign policy -- that a president does alone. And I think he really needs to hit those points that he is the most qualified of anybody in the whole field on foreign policy experience and on prosecution of this war. That's what he needs to do.

COLMES: I didn't mean to offend anybody with Joseph Stalin. It was a joke.

HANNITY: All right. I know you will -- and I know your -- but it was important the audience know.

COLMES: As long as people know I was kidding.

Thank you, Senator, for being on the program.

BROWNBACK: Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Sean.

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