'Because [President Obama's] so radical, you're now going to have, I think, the most consequential campaign since 1932,' when Franklin D. Roosevelt clobbered President Herbert Hoover, Newt Gingrich told POLITICO. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Gingrich forecasts Obama loss

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gives President Barack Obama only a 20 percent chance of being reelected — and says he might be the one to give Obama the boot.

Gingrich, who this week published a book called “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” said he thinks Obama has “about one chance in five of getting reelected.” and called him “the closest thing to Jimmy Carter I’ve seen.”


“Because he’s so radical, you’re now going to have, I think, the most consequential campaign since 1932,” when Franklin D. Roosevelt clobbered President Herbert Hoover, Gingrich said.

Giving predictions for November’s midterms, Gingrich said House Republicans will pick up “somewhere between 40 and 65 or 70 seats” — enough to gain control of the House. “I believe John Boehner will be speaker in January,” he said.

Gingrich said he even sees a chance of Republican control of the Senate. “If they can beat Barbara Boxer [in California], I think that [Mitch] McConnell is going to be the Senate majority leader.”

The former speaker said there is “more of a possibility now” that he’ll run for president than when he was considering the idea ahead of the 2008 election. He said he’ll decide in February or March of next year and will base the decision partly on whether there is “a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”

Gingrich said he and his wife, Callista, will base the decision on two top factors: “Is the case for basic change clear enough, and powerful enough, that articulating it and carrying it is a legitimate part of my role as a citizen?” and “Is there a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”

“This is a decision that will change the entire rest of our lives, and I think we're taking it with our daughters and our son-in-laws and our grandchildren,” he said. “We're taking this very methodically and very seriously. It's very daunting. … The whole point of my book is to say: We have to have a decade of really profound, deep, change, and it has to be in the right direction to compete with China and India and to defeat terrorism. And if we don't get those, we are in deep trouble. …

“The movement that would achieve that can't just be the presidency—that's where Obama didn't get it. It can't even just be the Congress. It's got to be school boards, city council, state legislature, county commission, governorships. I mean, you have to have a wave of change in this country for us to be able to compete with China and India. … There are thousands of people around the country who walk up and say: ‘We have to have leadership that will get this done.’”