Brody File Exclusive: Newt Gingrich Calls Herman Cain the 'Psychological Frontrunner' for GOP Nomination

10-23-2011

In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich calls Herman Cain the, “psychological frontrunner” for the Republican nomination.

I spoke to Gingrich one-on-one at Saturday night’s big Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

 

David Brody: This is not your first rodeo. What do you make of what you see with Herman Cain? He likes you. I know you like Herman Cain.

Newt Gingrich: Well, Herman and I are great friends.

Brody: To kind of be a realist, what do you take of what the media has been doing to him and what he has been doing to himself a little bit?

Gingrich: Herman has two challenges. And he's very likable, and right now, I think frankly, he may be psychologically the frontrunner, even past Romney at the moment. But what that does is it suddenly changes what the game is. The game isn't 'Gee, you're interesting.’ The game is 'wow, you could be president.' Well, the yardstick is a lot tougher for you could be president.

I think his two challenges are that he developed a great slogan 999. Now, people are asking, what is the policy behind the slogan? And it's getting pretty complicated. I think he almost needs to stop, spend some time in a room, get it thought out, get a couple of people, sort of be a murder board, take it apart and make sure that he has really deep answers, because the presidency, unlike say running for the Congress or running for Senate, the presidency, you're going to be under a merciless grilling.

The second is, when you're a speaker, in the sense of public speaking, you can pick your topics. When you're a would-be president, every topic picks you. Whatever happens this morning is the new topic. So, you have to have the ability to get briefed, very fast. Ideally, you should know a fair amount going in. And I think one of the Republican weaknesses has been that we rely too much on consultants and too much on talking points. And we don't rely enough on actually knowing things.

If you're going to lead the country and change history, you had better know a heck of a lot before you start, because there's not much time for learning on the job. And as Obama's proven, youth and inexperience are interesting, but they can also be a disaster.

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