VIDEO: Newt Gingrich: GOP Can’t ‘Starve’ Trump, Dems May Pick ‘First Open Socialist in Modern Times’

Newt Gingrich got out his crystal ball Saturday to make his prognostications about the 2016 presidential contest during a panel at Politicon featuring moderator and Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon, along with fellow Washington strategists David Axelrod, James Carville and Alex Castellanos. So what did the President Clinton-era speaker of the House see?

In front of a rowdy and overcapacity crowd at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Gingrich pointed to the failures in the current GOP establishment; delivered his postmortem of the recent double-whammy that knocked outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner and his formerly favored replacement, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, out of the House’s top echelon; and explained why Republican power players can’t force Donald Trump out of the race for the White House.

Here’s one snippet from Gingrich’s opening monologue, in which he describes what he sees as telltale movements on the left and the right:

I just wanna say, the Freedom Caucus is not a sign of a handful of nutcases getting together. The Freedom Caucus is a signal about a country which is sending an amazingly powerful signal of unhappiness – at least on the right side of the aisle – as opposed to the Democrats. … You may be about to nominate the first open socialist in modern times.

Posted below are several video clips from Saturday’s panel discussion, fittingly titled “Deconstructing ’16.” Gingrich, whose name had been bandied about in previous days with regard to the crisis in the House, pipes up throughout — in the last installment, he explains why Trump’s high-ranking Republican adversaries can’t get rid of him or that other tenacious outlier in their 2016 crop of contenders, Ben Carson. “The establishment starves outsiders,” Gingrich said, and its elite members have a real problem on their hands. “[Trump] has to implode,” Gingrich added, mimicking the opponents currently sweating the Donald, “and we can’t survive if he doesn’t implode.”

What’s stopping them from ousting the outsiders? To take liberties with the Clinton-era quote credited to that former president’s adviser, James Carville: It’s the money, stupid.

Speaking of Carville, the so-called Ragin’ Cajun becomes quite animated around 1:36 in Clip 3, when he implores his cohorts and the crowd: “Name me a single economic indicator that has performed better under Republican presidents than Democratic presidents … Name one!”

Watch this lineup of establishment consultants from the right and left break it down in the videos below:

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–Posted by Kasia Anderson