Before we go all in on an electoral prediction from Newt Gingrich, we might want to tap the breaks a bit. After all, this is the same 81-year-old historian who, just prior to the 2012 election, predicted a landslide victory for … Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.

“I was wrong,” said Newt in the wake of Obama’s relatively easy win over Romney — a win that flew in the face of the former House speaker’s prediction of more than 300 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote for Romney. “I think whether it’s Michael Barone or Karl Rove or a whole group of us,” he added, spread-loading the blame, “we all thought we understood the historical pattern and the fact that with this level of unemployment, with this level of gasoline pricing what would happen.”

Apparently undaunted, Newt was at it again Monday, when he noted to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that a huge portion of a crucial Democrat constituency is having serious second thoughts about Joe Biden.

“First of all,” he said, “I think we shouldn’t assume that black Americans are dumb or insensitive or incapable of learning. They’re looking at grocery store prices they can’t afford, and they know it’s Biden’s fault. They’re looking at millions of illegal immigrants coming into their neighborhoods, taking their jobs, threatening their families with violence, and they know Biden is responsible. You turn around, and they know the tools aren’t working, despite all the money we pour into the teachers’ unions, and they know the Democrats are responsible. They look at big cities where … Democrat mayor after Democrat mayor is corrupt, incompetent, and incapable of serving their interests. So what you’re beginning to see is a movement that says … ‘What have we got to lose by trying out Donald Trump?’”

Newt has no doubt forgotten more about politics than most of us will ever learn, so we’re inclined to take him seriously — albeit with a dash of caveat to hedge our emptor. So here goes:

I think [Trump] will get a higher [black] vote than any Republican since Eisenhower and may, in fact, exceed Eisenhower, because the momentum for the next four months, I think, is all going to be in … Trump’s favor. … The number of black Democrats, and for that matter, Latino Democrats, who are now undecided and potentially could switch to Trump are breathtaking. And that’s why you’re beginning to see places like … Minnesota, the last poll, Trump’s up four. Well, if he carries Minnesota by any margin, he’s on the verge of a 1980 Ronald Reagan blowout of Jimmy Carter.

Easy there, Newt. Easy, boy.

And yet, something is definitely happening in the black community. Rapper 50 Cent said as much recently when he noted to a CBS reporter that black men were “identifying with Trump” because “they’ve got RICO charges” too. (We’re not sure how many black men who aren’t rap moguls and don’t have their own liquor brands are facing racketeering charges, but we get his point: Trump is vilified and so are they.)

NBC News political pundit Steve Kornacki sees it, too, although he doesn’t necessarily believe it yet. “While they remain overwhelmingly aligned with President Joe Biden,” he said of blacks, “his level of support is lower than in 2020. And Donald Trump’s Black support is often clocking in at levels that would outpace those of all previous Republican nominees in the modern era.” He then poured cold water on his own observation, adding that no Republican presidential candidate since 1964 has garnered more than 12% of the black vote, with most of them languishing in the single digits.

Donald Trump, though, is an entirely different kind of Republican candidate, and he’s in the process of remaking the Republican Party.

South Carolina kingmaker James Clyburn isn’t buying any of this — at least not that he’s willing to admit. To him, all this talk of black support for Trump is “miscommunication” and “disinformation.” And it’s all the media’s fault. “I know the power of the media,” he says, “and the power of the media, repeating these things rather than reporting what’s actually happening. That is what’s causing the problem.”

We beg to differ. We think Joe Biden and his historical condescension toward blacks and his disastrous open-border policies are causing the problem.

The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood points out another problem facing the Republicans: turnout. Pointing to more localized contests such as a recent congressional race in Ohio, he notes, “The outcome of recent elections should give conservatives reason to pump the brakes on celebrating before any ballots have been cast.”

In any case, the Democrats’, ahem, get-out-the-vote efforts seem to be well ahead of those of the GOP. Either that, or Joe Biden got all 81 million of those votes on the up-and-up. Either way, Michael Whatley at the RNC has some work to do.

So, is Newt Gingrich onto something, or is he cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? Time will tell, but it’s increasingly likely that we’re going to be able to put to the test the age-old Republican proposition that any significant incursion into the black vote by a GOP candidate would be fatal to the Democrats’ presidential prospects.