Newt Gingrich makes prediction on Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s House speaker bid

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that Rep. Kevin McCarthy will face some challenges — but ultimately prevail in his bid to become the chamber’s next leader.

McCarthy is facing opposition from five House Republicans, leaving him short of the 218 votes he would need in the full chamber to become speaker when he and his GOP colleagues take control in January.

The California congressman’s “challenge is that at 222, you can only afford to lose four people and still have 218. … Right now, five of them have tried to hold him up and get him to agree to a variety of things,” Gingrich told host John Catsimatidis on his WABC 770 AM radio show in an interview that aired Sunday.

“What they’re doing is silly and destructive,” he added.

But Gingrich, who was speaker from 1995 to 1999, predicted: “My guess is that by Jan. 3, when they have the vote, [McCarthy] will have 218, and he’ll be speaker.”

Despite the narrow majority Republicans won in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Gingrich said McCarthy will be able to press the party’s agenda, noting that it will be the same number House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had.

“With that majority – 222 – she managed to pass trillions of dollars in spending and … ​a ​bunch of radical left-wing bills,” he said. “You can get a lot done once you get to be speaker.”​

In the long run, Gingrich, of Georgia, said he thinks McCarthy will find success.

​”I think he’s been pretty effective so far in letting out that he’s going to create a special committee on China. And he’s going to create a whole series of steps that the Democrats are going to find pretty uncomfortable. He’s already pledged that the first bill they’re going to vote on will repeal the 87,000 IRS agents that the Democrats want to add​,” he said.

“I think he’s got a pretty good case for being an effective conservative speaker​.”

While Republicans control the House, Democrats still have the edge in the 50-50 Senate, which Gingrich pointed out may pose trouble for the GOP agenda.

“It’s obviously going to be really complicated with the Democrats in the Senate — and with ​[President] ​Biden feeling like he had a good election, which he did. Therefore, he’s not inclined to compromise on anything​,” Gingrich said. ​