RAY LAHOOD HAS NEVER, EVER, been called a Newtoid. As chief of staff to then-House Republican leader Bob Michel for a dozen years, he often took offense at Newt Gingrich’s pressure tactics, which eventually prompted Michel to retire. Running to succeed Michel in 1994, LaHood refused to sign the Contract With America, the GOP campaign document that was Gingrich’s pride and joy. Then, as a moderate House member from Illinois, he was a frequent critic of Gingrich’s performance as speaker. But all that was before conservatives sought to topple Gingrich this summer. Now, LaHood is one of Gingrich’s staunchest supporters. Gingrich, he says, “has grown.”
Jerry Lewis of California agrees. Yet for nearly two decades, he had a prickly relationship with Gingrich. Advancing ahead of Gingrich, Lewis rose to the No. 3 spot in the House GOP leadership, only to be ousted in 1992 by Dick Armey, then one of Gingrich’s closest allies. Lewis loathed Gingrich’s disruptive tactics. “Not my style,” he says. But once Gingrich was under attack, Lewis rushed to his defense. “I don’t do a lot of speaking out at the caucus,” Lewis says. At a meeting of House Republicans on July 17, however, Lewis extolled Gingrich and said if he’s challenged for speaker, “I’ll be involved in the leadership race [on his behalf] like I’ve never been involved in a leadership race before.”
Notice the change in Gingrich’s base of support among congressional Republicans. Once he relied chiefly on conservatives, the more fervently right-wing the better. Now, his base is the party establishment: old-timers, non-ideological regulars, committee and subcommittee chairmen, leadership wannabees. “When you’re an establishment type, you defend the establishment,” says David McIntosh of Indiana. “At this point, the establishment is Newt Gingrich.”
In other words, the people who tried to impede Gingrich’s rise and criticized his tactics are now his strongest backers. The speaker has one other pocket of support: moderates. Indeed, they were ready with a slate to replace majority leader Dick Armey, whip Tom DeLay, and conference chairman John Boehner had Gingrich or others sought to remove them at the closed-door GOP session on July 23. The slate included David Dreier of California for majority leader, Dennis Hastert of Illinois for whip, and Jennifer Dunn of Washington for chair of the House Republican Conference. But Gingrich decided to avert another fight and stick with Armey, DeLay, and Boehner, though they had conspired to overthrow him.
The transformation of Gingrich’s base leaves him stronger, but only in the short run. And he’s likely to be more accommodating and less conservative. But Gingrich may soon miss the young right-wing acolytes who used to hover around him like groupies. These conservatives, mostly elected in 1990, 1992, and 1994, were his most reliable allies. Now, many are disillusioned by his frequent compromises, flip-flops, and stumbles. Gingrich has a new cadre of followers, but they aren’t committed to him in the way the conservatives were. The support of the establishment figures and moderates is tepid and shallow. It’s predicated more on disgust with rebellious conservatives than on attachment to Gingrich. One of the noisiest of the moderates backing Gingrich, Chris Shays of Connecticut, took weeks last winter making up his mind whether to vote for Gingrich for speaker again. Yet he huffed at Joe Scarborough of Florida, an anti-Gingrich rebel, for complaining about the speaker’s effort to build a new power base.
Gingrich is stronger in the sense he has more latitude to operate as House leader. At the moment, what House Republicans fear most is another bout of turmoil. The failed coup against Gingrich proved to be a public embarrassment for practically all of them. And another attempt to topple Gingrich could threaten the GOP’s chances of holding the House in 1998. “I can’t say that it’s been ruled out,” says Scarborough. But certainly he and others are more reluctant to try again. So the result is that Gingrich has wiggle room in dealing with Democrats and President Clinton, probably through the end of the year. While conservatives insist Gingrich shouldn’t yield much in negotiations on the tax and budget bills, they’ll undoubtedly go along even if he does.
This doesn’t mean Gingrich presides over a happy Republican camp. Far from it. The situation, says Pete King of New York, is “a cease-fire in place.” LaHood is still furious at anti-Gingrich conservatives. “They’re people who’ve never served in a legislative body. before,” he told me. “They’re ideologues. They don’t really think this is a system of compromise.”
Lewis argues the younger conservatives act recklessly because “they’ve never been in the minority before.” If they’d suffered that indignity, as Republicans did for 40 years in the House, they’d operate more soberly. Still, it wasn’t Gingrich or his new claque who got the biggest applause at the July 23 meeting. DeLay, while apologizing for bad judgment, drew louder cheers than Gingrich. And Bill Paxon of New York, fired by Gingrich as chairman of leadership meetings, received a standing ovation, the only one at the meeting.
How effectively Gingrich and his new allies will function together is anybody’s guess. In the pre-coup days, Gingrich leaned heavily on Armey, DeLay, and Boehner, and, though they nominally kept their posts, they’re not trusted advisers anymore. When they were first fingered as conspirators, Gingrich hastily put together an informal (and less conservative) team to count heads and determine how many votes he has among the 228 House Republicans. That group consisted of Dreier, Dunn, Shays, Mike Parker of Mississippi, David Hobson and Bob Ney of Ohio, Jim Nussle of Iowa, and John Linder of Georgia. To the extent Gingrich listens to them — and Gingrich sometimes doesn’t listen to other House members — he’s likely to give top priority to finalizing a tax and budget deal, whatever the tradeoffs. Adherence to conservative principles won’t be much of a factor.
Gingrich’s biggest problem, though, is himself. He wisely backed away from a bid to toss DeLay out as whip after learning conservatives would revolt. But at a leadership meeting on July 22, he suggested a broader purge aimed at driving anti-Gingrich renegades out of the party. Ground rules were needed for membership in the GOP caucus, he said, if only to stamp out disloyalty. Should renegades insist on running again as Republicans, then the National Republican Congressional Committee could fund challengers in GOP primaries in hopes of ousting them. The two dozen House GOP leaders listened to this in disbelief (only one clapped), hoping Gingrich wasn’t really serious about such a divisive scheme. Gingrich didn’t crack a smile.
Fred Barnes is executive director of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
