The former speaker attacked those voting against candidate Kevin McCarthy, with a fourth ballot expected on Wednesday to try to elect a new House speaker.
"These five people need to take a deep breath tonight and ask themselves do they want to send the signal that every five people in the conference can screw up everything for whatever reason," he said.
Gingrich added that he knew"from personal conversation that last night three of them went in and presented Kevin McCarthy with 30-some different demands, most of them involving personal advancement. "They weren't talking about ideology. They weren't talking about principles. They were talking about who gets which committee, who gets to be chairman. Things that are a clearly an effort to blackmail all of the rest of the conference," the former speaker said.
"And I think the rest of the conference understands this is a core decision. Do the 202 win, or do the 20 win?" Gingrich asked."And, in a free society, just as you can't give into terrorists and you can't give into hostage-takers, you can't allow them to take the conference hostage and win. "I hope that in a conference tomorrow morning when people have a good night's sleep, have a chance to talk, I hope they can find some key policy, not patronage, a key policy position to bring back enough of the members to get this over with on the first ballot tomorrow," he said.on Tuesday, pointing to the nine ballots it took in 1923 and"133 ballots to pick a Speaker in 1855. So this is not unprecedented.
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