Newt Gingrich is not happy with the GOP.
"If the Republicans can't break out of being the right-wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012," Gingrich said during a speech Wednesday in Missouri.
While Gingrich – who helped craft the GOP's "Contract with America" in 1994, the year his party gained majorities in both house of Congress – said he won't participate in any third-party movement, he spoke harshly of the party's current identity on Fox News Sunday.
"Republicans need to understand that there's a country which did not like the big spending of the [Bush] administration, didn't like the interventionist policies of [that] administration," Gingrich said. "And the country at large would like to see a genuine alternative to the Obama strategy of basically trying to run the entire economy from the White House and basically trying to increase government, I think, by 36 percent this year, which is the largest single increase outside of war in American history."
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Gingrich, now chairman of the think tank American Solutions, which he helped found in 2007, said that Republicans must stop insisting on earmarks and big spending, and must begin paying attention to the "vast majority of Republicans."
"People are not trapped into a system," he said, referring to the current landscape of political parties.
But Gingrich complimented GOP House leaders John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor, saying their recent effort on the budget has been "helpful."
Late last month, Boehner unveiled "The Republican Road to Recovery" at a press conference at which he was expected to announce his party's alternative to President Barack Obama's proposed federal budget. The document turned out to be a blueprint of conservatives values, lacking any budget numbers.
Democrats and their allies have taken to calling the GOP "the Party of No" in recent months, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying that the GOP has "become the party of no new ideas."
This video is from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast Apr. 5, 2009.
