Washington Unplugged: Gingrich Sees Opportunity To Redefine GOP As "Loyal Opposition"

On today's "Washington Unplugged," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sat down with CBS News' Bob Schieffer to discuss the future of the Republican Party and President Obama's budget.

Gingrich believes that the Republican Party deserved the trouncing it has received in the two most recent elections. He saw the electoral results not as a repudiation of conservative ideology, but as a failure on the part of his party to deliver for the American people.

"It got off track, it failed to perform, and it got fired," Gingrich said of his party. "That's the great genius of America, if you don't do your job, the customer gets to choose somebody else."

Gingrich argued that President Obama's budget pushed the country in a left-wing direction and was the "boldest effort" to remake America since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." But the former speaker was emboldened. He believes that Mr. Obama's ambitious agenda provides ample opportunities for Republicans to define themselves as the loyal opposition and return their party to its core principals.

You can watch the whole show, with the Gingrich interview, an interview with author and former Army Captain Craig Mullaney and a roundtable with CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris and Washington Post White House reporter Michael Fletcher, below.