Gingrich to activists: ‘Establishment is in such a state of shock’

Former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich (R) on Saturday said that the “establishment is in such a state of shock.”

Gingrich took the podium on Saturday at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit to a standing ovation from the conservative audience.

{mosads}Gingrich proclaimed that Christine O’Donnell is going to win Delaware’s Senate seat this November.

Gingrich called O’Donnell the “candidate of paychecks” running against the “candidate of food stamps”– the Democratic candidate Chris Coons.

Ginrich’s moniker comes as a direct slam at President Obama and the Democratic majority’s spending policies.

O’Donnell and Coons will be battling for Vice President Joe Biden’s former Senate seat.

“I am a great passionate believer in the wisdom of the American people over time,” Gingrich said. “We occasionally make mistakes…2008 was an example.”

Gingrich called for a new Congress to force out Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

“When Secretary Sebelius said the other day she would punish insurance
companies that told the truth about the cost of Obamacare, she was
behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny,” Gingrich said.
“And if she’s going to represent left-wing thought police about
Obamacare, she should be forced to resign by the new Congress.”

Sebelius earlier this month sent a letter to a leading insurance
industry group complaining that some companies were blaming premium
increases on healthcare reform legislation.

Gingrich, who may have his sights on a presidential run in 2012, said that those currently in power now, “the elites,” are “wrong about the values” that define Americans.

He called on “everybody who cares about America’s future” to replace the “elites” with “common-sense grass-roots Americans” who understand “the truth.”

Gingrich also attacked the construction of the mosque near Ground Zero in New York. Gingrich declined to attend a 9/11 rally against the mosque but on Saturday before the conservative audience he waded directly into the controversy.

“Radical Islamists” would “fundamentally change” this country to a system that “nobody else would recognize,” he said.

This story was updated at noon