Former Speaker of the House and possible 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said he thinks Nancy Pelosi will have the votes she needs to remain her party’s leader in the House but the decision to remain may not be the San Francisco Representative’s wisest decision.

“I think she has the votes because people who got defeated were moderates,” said Gingrich on FOX. “The Democratic party in the House today is more liberal today than it was before the election by big numbers.”

Gingrich said that if Pelosi wants to say, she could probably do so by a large vote count. The former speaker, however, said — as a strategic move — he was surprised Pelosi would try to stay.

“Having a San Francisco leader after this election strikes me as a very hard way to go out and recruit candidates,” said Gingrich who called the a recent letter written by defeated Democrats to Pelosi, “essentially right.”

On Monday, FOX reported that it had obtained the letter asking the House leader to step down. While the letter is reportedly circulating the Capitol unsigned by anyone, the authors say they “fear that Republicans will further demonize you, and in so doing, they will scare potential candidates out. The prospect of having to run against their own party leadership, in addition to their Republican opponent is simply too daunting.”

Gingrich said he believes Pelosi’s motivation is the possibility of a Democratic and Obama win in 2012, although he foresees the one-dominate House Democrats suffering a “long, permanent minority status.”

“To think that you can be the same person who was repudiated, come out of the same San Franscisco background, go around the country and somehow create a new majority strikes me as very implausible,” he said.

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