The following transcript comes from my interview with Newt Gingrich, conducted on Thursday and published to this website just yesterday. Big thanks to our Eric Ingemunson for providing this transcript:

CHIP: Thanks for joining us this Friday. And we're talking about—what else—NY-23, the race between the RINO Dede Scozzafava and the real Republican running under the Conservative Party banner, Doug Hoffman, recently dubbed the “Battle for the Soul of the GOP” and we're talking with one of the biggies today. Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, a host of bloggers on the right and many others, Jim DeMint, members of the House, weighed in on behalf of the upstart Hoffman.

Many in the establishment have backed the RINO—sorry, the Republican—because she has an 'R' behind her name and what's most stunning about it—the shocker—was when the former Speaker came out, Newt Gingrich, and endorsed Dede Scozzafava, saying—well I don't need to put words in his mouth. Let's go to him right now.

Happy to have joining us, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

So Newt, you know we'll probably talk a little bit about that race in NY-23, and they know we're on opposite sides about that a little bit, but first I wanted to ask you about something that we're on similar sides, but I saw an article kicking around yesterday and the day before, someone making noise about how with your education initiative you should break off all contact with Al Sharpton—I happen to know what you're up to there and how much good you're doing and how ridiculous that call is. Do you mind explaining a little bit what you're doing through American Solutions?

NEWT: Sure, absolutely. A year ago Al Sharpton made a very big shift and came out for education to be the number one civil right of the 21^st century. And he took such a firm position on the need for every child to get a good education and he's been very aggressively challenging the teachers' unions, challenging the bureaucracy, and doing something that for somebody coming out of his background is really pretty gutsy. The president has also come out for every state adopting a law creating basically unlimited charter schools and the right of every parent to have accurate information about whether or not their child is making progress and they have the right to take their child out of a failing school and put him into a school that succeeds. 

CHIP: That's one thing that might surprise a lot of people about President Obama.

NEWT: Yeah, and he said it at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and he invited me to come to a meeting with he and Secretary of Education Duncan and Mayor Bloomberg and Al Sharpton and this is a zone where for a liberal Democrat to be that aggressively in favor of dramatic choice in education—not everything I'd like, I'd frankly like to see a Pell grant for every child K through twelve so that they really have open choice—but nonetheless an enormous break with the bureaucracy and I think it deserves considerable support. 

And so we've been going around with Secretary Duncan and Al Sharpton. And when you're in a Philadelphia meeting in which every elected official except one is African American, and you have Sharpton standing next to me, even if we say exactly the same thing the impact of him saying it is dramatically bigger than my saying it.

At the same time, we're going to the places like the Basis School in Tucson, which is Bob Compton described as the best high school in the world, and we're both highlighting for the news media things that work and things that ought to change. We were at a school in Philadelphia which jumped 61 percentile points in three years because they went to a charter school model. Very same building, very same students, went from the 25^th percentile to 86^th percentile in three years, a hundred percent of the 11^th grade going to college. Now if I can get that to happen at every school in America,

if we can get the Los Angeles schools to reform, then I'll stand next to virtually anybody on the platform and argue that we ought to put our children first and we ought to put learning first and let's find a way to work together.

CHIP: Okay, fine. I'm glad to have led with that so that everyone can hear that really tremendous work you're doing in regards to education and the coalition that you're building to make it happen. I think it's an important reminder because you've taken a lot of heat with regards to NY-23 and your having come out and endorsed Dede Scozzafava in that race who many on the right, who many on the right look at the old term RINO. Do you want to go ahead and state your—

NEWT: —let's just talk about that for a minute. I helped put together a majority in 1994 for the first time in forty years.

CHIP: Of course.

NEWT: And I helped lead that majority to reelection in 1996 for the first time since 1928. One of the reasons we did that is because we put together a center-right coalition. We did very well in New England, we did very well in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we did very well in Washington state. We picked up a seat with Tom Campbell in Silicon Valley.

There was a conscious, deliberate belief that you can have a center-right majority and you can retire Nancy Pelosi and you can make Barack Obama a one-term president, you can defeat Harry Reid, but it's a center-right majority.

Now, I was faced with the following data. There had been an open contest, there had been four public meetings. In the four public meetings, Dede Scozzafava did fairly well and she was the local state elected official. Hoffman did very badly, in the bottom third in all four meetings. The county chairs voted unanimously, eleven to zero, to have Dede Scozzafava as their nominee. Now, I'm from Georgia. I'm much more conservative than upstate New York. But we are seeking a nominee to replace a moderate Republican McHugh whose held that seat for twenty years. I didn't feel like I could intervene and impose my values on a district—remember she is endorsed by the National Rifle Association, she signed the no-tax-increase pledge, she voted against the Democratic governor's high-tax, big-spending budget. She is against cap-and-trade and energy taxes, she is against the Obama health plan, she will vote for John Boehner to be Speaker and against Nancy Pelosi. She's not perfect, if I was in a primary I might not vote for her. But as a national party leader who wants to build a national majority party, if we run around purging everybody who we disagreed with we'll never gonna win. And let me apply this directly to California.

CHIP: Okay.

NEWT: McCain got 39 percent last year in California, okay?

CHIP: Right.

NEWT: We've gotten beaten badly in a series of statewide races except for Schwarzenegger, who is a unique figure. Sixty-four percent of Californians voted against more spending and more taxes in May in the referendum. Every Congressional district voted no including Pelosi's, in which 51 percent of the people in her San Francisco district voted no. Now if we could find a way to build a coalition of all 64 percent who voted no to more spending and more taxes in Sacramento and we could elect a Republican governor with 64 percent committed to changing Sacramento, that would be a historic achievement.

CHIP: So how about some of the finer points, however, that I think conservatives are right about with regards to NY-23, such as again looking back at miss Scozzafava that she would have supported the stimulus, that she would be a vote for card check—the feeling is that it's on crucial bills and those very marginal votes where an Arlen Specter or an Olympia Snowe or someone else potentially kills us. To us, Dede Scozzafava strikes us as one, that in a crucial hour, at a crucial vote, she will let us down.

NEWT: She might. Now, let's be clear. If you're saying to me do I want a Republican who is only going to be with us eight times out of ten, and two times out of ten not going be with us, or would I rather throw the seat a way to a Democrat who is going to be against us ten times out of ten?

Remember, in New York and in New England today, there are 36 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Now I just want to suggest to you, trying to run a right-wing strategy that is not a center-right strategy, guarantees Pelosi speaker for life.

CHIP: True—

NEWT: —and I think my conservative credentials are pretty deep. And I think from balancing the budget across an entire range of things I've been pretty consistent.

CHIP: Of course—

NEWT: —but I've also said for my entire career, it has to be a center-right majority. Now, Hoffman, by the way, who doesn't live in the district, also had pledged he would support the Republican nominee. Now it turned out it wasn't—he changed his mind after three days.

CHIP: Don't you suspect that's partly reflective of the mood in the country? I mean it's true, that these tea party protesters, and with someone like Hoffman who is clearly new to politics, part of the beauty of the movement is that—I can tell you first hand knowing a lot of the tea partiers, a movement I know you're generally supportive of in terms of the sentiment—that these are people getting involved for the first time, citizens joining the fray and who have said, “enough”. I mean our own party did let us down— it went into the majority on certain key spending items and the growth of government and this is a district, boiling down or coming back on one of the points you made, this particular district has been reliably Republican and shouldn't need so far to the center, a center-right candidate. A conservative could have won this district.

NEWT: Well, we may well find out next week. I think the question is, if you are a national figure, at what point do you step in when it's an 11 to zero vote of the local county chairs, at what point do you step in and say, “boy you people sure are stupid. I reject all 11 of you”. Not a six to five, to the best of my knowledge there was not a single vote for Hoffman among the 11 county chairs.

So outsiders now decide, all the people that tell us we don't want Washington running our lives, all the people who tell us they want local control, they want decentralization, they want the 10^th Amendment for states, all these folks now say, “This is different. I know so much better than NY-23 Republicans; I will now tell you who they should have picked.”

CHIP: Well, it's an interesting stance you take in that regard because there are other high-profile national figures that have taken a different view of this one. They happen to believe it's a hill to die on—Sarah Palin, Dick Armey and a few others. Let me ask you this question. You're taking a lot of heat in the blogosphere on the right, you know, I think the right is sort of stunned by your position here, it's good to give you a chance to discuss it. Regardless of the outcome—win, lose or draw—one of our candidates get over the top, or the Democrat takes it, how do we get together, those that are on the right, who are so frustrated by the lack of philosophy with our own party in Washington and those who are trying to achieve a victory for Scozzafava, how do these different parts of our party come together after November 3^rd?

NEWT: I honestly don't know. I've been doing this a long time. I've seen this party commit suicide on occasion. I've seen the party rise above it on occasion. I watched Reagan endorse Ford in 1976. I watched Reagan campaign for Chuck Percy in 1978. Reagan believed always in appealing to independents and Democrats, and Reagan believed always in finding a way to unify because he understood that in the end if you don't unify, you can't govern.

He had been governor of California, not just a spokesperson, and he really believed he had to find a way to bring people together. When we did the contract we had a very strong, very solid contract that created a center-right majority. I would hope that in 2010 that we could develop a set of first principles under Michael Steele's leadership that gives Republicans a sense of general commitment. And again, in looking at the half-full glass and not the half-empty glass, if I said to you we have a National Rifle Association 2^nd Amendment person who also signed a no-tax pledge, opposes cap-and-trade and opposes Obamacare, that's not trivial. It may not be everything you want in life. I think if she does win we'll see how she votes, but if I can get an upstate New York vote 9 times out of 10 I feel pretty good about it. I say that as a speaker who used to have to regularly go out and get those votes to win votes.

CHIP: Okay, that's fair. The flip side of the Reagan comment is that when communicating our message, he was always resoundingly clear and he said there are times when you got to stand on principle and for those whom those principles don't work we have to let them go their own way. Does that end up meaning that what we are really missing right now is that real national leader amongst Republicans to unify all parts of the party. Is that what we need, and if so, do you have confidence that that person will emerge?

NEWT: Well, you didn't get that in Reagan until March or April of 1980. Remember, Reagan was one of many candidates, there were a lot of people who thought he was too old; there were people who thought he was too conservative. He was not the national leader at this stage. Remember this was the equivalent of November of 1977. We spent a long period in the wilderness with guys like Kemp developing supply-side economics and a lot of things coming together and then Reagan emerged finally in the spring of 1980. My hope is that we'll have somebody emerge in 2012 with a sufficiently compelling message that it's clear that Barack Obama can be a one-term president and my hope is in 2010 we can unify around replacing Pelosi and Reid and have dramatic gains in the House and Senate.

CHIP: Then perhaps along the way until 2012 this battle that we're having internally perhaps it's healthy and it will help lead us to that point.

NEWT: It is, it's a healthy argument and I don't mind being in an argument even with some my friends. I think my job is to do what I think is right and when they like it they can applaud and when they don't like it we'll have a healthy open discussion, and I hope at the end of it they'll still be my friends.

CHIP: Well, we're just about out of time. My last question then is—regarding those people that might emerge, I can't let you get away without asking—you're one that many hope might emerge and take a shot at 2012. Your thoughts?

NEWT: We're going to continue doing what we think is right, and we're going to continue to develop new ideas for American Solutions and new health programs at the Center for Health Transformation, national security developments at the American Enterprise Institute, and if at the end of that process in February 2011 there's a large enough group that thinks I have to run, then I'll have to face that at that time.

CHIP: Fair enough. What a pleasure it was speaking to the former Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Thanks for being here, Newt.

NEWT: Thank you.

CHIP: To learn more about Newt and his group, American Solutions, go to AmericanSolutions.com. Also available at Amazon.com, his new book To Try Men's Souls, it's a novel about George Washington and the fight for freedom in America. You know he's a best-selling author, he's out with a new one. He's out on the book tour; I'm going to grab a copy myself, I understand it's terrific. Once again, Newt Gingrich, and the book is To Try Men's Souls.

And regardless, I still think—you heard his explanation—I still think he's on the wrong side of this debate in NY-23. I think he backed the wrong horse and I suspect it could hurt him in the future. This is going to be one that conservatives are going to have a hard time forgetting. That being said, the reason I led up front with a conversation about the things he's doing with regards to education is that listeners should not forget—Republicans most of all should not forget—all the good he's done for this party. The big picture thinker he's been, the strategist, and knowing deeply what's he's been doing in our educational system, I knew we had to get that out there as a reminder of what a strategic, big-picture thinker is Newt. So yes, he's made what many of us consider to be a big mistake in NY-23 but he's still Newt Gingrich and we thank him for joining us today. Thank you for having been here on a special mid-week edition of Last Call. I am Chip Hanlon. We're here exclusively, typically on Tuesdays at RedCounty.com. We'll be here talking about the election next Tuesday—big day, November 3^rd, if there's a race going on in your district get out there and vote.