Newt Gingrich Says The GOP Already Has A Back-Up Plan If Obama Wins, But Where Was Plan A?

The GOP already has a contingency plan if President Obama wins the 2012 election, according to Newt Gingrich. As a second term for the POTUS increasingly seems inevitable, Republicans are going back to the drawing board to figure out how to come back big in 2016.

Gingrich showed up on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, sharing a bit of what will become the GOP’s plan to re-take the White House and make a political comeback in 2016. The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein asked the former House Speaker and occasional presidential hopeful whether GOP leaders will, on the night of Obama’s possible second inauguration, come together to plot how to defeat Democrats come election season in 2016.

“Of course,” replied Gingrich. “We’ll figure out how to win in ’16.”

It’s not terribly surprising that the GOP would start drawing up plans to take back the White House in 2016 if President Obama wins re-election. The problem with what Gingrich says is what it suggests. First, Gingrich’s comments seem to indicate that the GOP has potentially given up on the coming election and their candidate Mitt Romney. As election season shrinks to election day, decreasing GOP support for Romney signals even more trouble for the already-troubled candidate.

Second: Why didn’t the GOP come up with a decent plan to re-take the White House in 2012? Gingrich saying that the GOP is talking contingency leads me to wonder: What happened to Plan A? Furthermore, what kind of back-up plan can we expect when the initial plan has been terrible? If the GOP is finally, thankfully, taking their party and their political place seriously, why do they have to wait four more years to make a comeback?

COMMENTARY | I’ve long thought that The Republican Party absolutely has a place in American politics. It’s true that they have sorely lost their way, starting in the twilight years of the Bush administration and continuing strong as 2012 comes to a close. Conservatives, at their best, are appealing because of their familiarity. They reflect tried-and-true traditions. Liberals, meanwhile, are consistently appealing because of their love of progress. They get us all shaken and riled up over what could be, and paint beautiful pictures of America’s possible future, and lately, they’ve been killer campaigners. Sadly, progress often-times comes with a cost, and while some true-blues would argue that the cost is always worth it, a majority of Americans rarely feel the same.

Conservatives look back, they “conserve,” as their namesake suggests. They try to use the past to make a better future. Liberals espouse conviction, wanting to explore new options and try new things to carve out a better future.

And that’s their advantage right now. Conviction. The left has it, and that’s why they’ll probably win. The right needs it if it has any hope of a comeback.

Here’s the video of Newt Gingrich on Morning Joe:

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