DISLOYAL REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE don’t get punished. They get rewarded. That is what’s happened to the nine Republicans who refused to vote for Newt Gingrich’s reelection as speaker on January 7. They suddenly became heroes in their districts, lauded for their independence and courage. In some cases their political futures brightened. Their hometown papers treated them like saints. The Seattle Times said representative Linda Smith of Washington ” deserves undiluted admiration” for abandoning Gingrich. California representative Tom Campbell took the high road, making “the direct, ethical argument against Gingrich, not the political, tactical one,” insisted the San Jose Mercury-News. And here’s how the Des Moines Register reacted to the antiGingrich vote of Iowa’s Jim Leach: He “has a moral compass and follows its directions when it would be far easier to be blown along by political winds.”
Given the pressure from Gingrich and House GOP leaders, it wasn’t easy to vote against Gingrich. But it wasn’t all that hard either. Gingrich, demonized by the national media, is the most unpopular politician in the country. When considering how to vote for House speaker, says representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, he quickly concluded “the politically expedient route” was to trash Gingrich. And Sanford is from Charleston, a Republican stronghold and conservative hotbed. Even there, had he voted against Gingrich, “I’d be a huge hero.” Sanford, who has lingering doubts about Gingrich’s ability to lead effectively, voted for him. “It was a bad political move for me,” Sanford says.
What about stiff punishment by Republican leaders for breaking ranks and shattering GOP unity? Forget it. “That wasn’t an issue people were worried about,” says Sanford. The night before the vote, he gathered with eight House Republicans to discuss Gingrich. The question of retribution never came up. Representative Mark Souder of Indiana, a conservative who’s often clashed with Gingrich, also flirted with the idea of going against the speaker. He didn’t give the prospect of punishment a second thought either. Souder voted for Gingrich, though he knows firsthand the political value of bucking him. In 1995 during the budget battle with President Clinton, Souder refused to go along with Gingrich’s decision to reopen the federal government. As punishment, Gingrich announced he wouldn’t appear as planned at a Souder fund- raiser, which had been expected to reap $ 60,000. With the fanfare over his independence from Gingrich, Souder’s stature in Indiana soared. The fund- raiser brought in $ 250,000.
This is not a new phenomenon. Challenging his party’s leadership in Washington made Phil Gramm a Texas icon and national figure. As a Democratic House member in 1983, Gramm was stripped of his position on the Budget Committee because he collaborated with Republicans on cutting federal spending. He responded by quitting Congress, switching parties, running in a special election, and winning in a landslide. In 1984, he was elected to the Senate as a Republican. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, a Democrat who had won narrowly in 1986, benefited from splitting with President Clinton in 1993. When the administration yanked a federal project from Alabama, Shelby was lionized in the state. He became enormously popular. In 1994, he won reelection handily, then became a Republican.
Obviously, Gingrich doesn’t want to make martyrs out of the nine renegades by punishing them publicly. But that’s not the real reason for his refusal to exact retribution. Rather, his inaction reflects his weak position. For one thing, he needs all the Republicans he can get when the House votes on his own punishment for ethics violations. “The margin of victory is so narrow, you don’t want to turn anyone into an enemy,” says representative David Mcintosh of Indiana. Besides, says a GOP House member, “a lot of people who voted for Gingrich are sympathetic to what the nine did.” Further complicating things for Gingrich is his continued wooing of moderates on substantive votes. That effort would suffer if a moderate like Leach were deposed as chairman of the Banking Committee. But if Gingrich only went after conservative dissenters, that would anger many in the large conservative GOP bloc. It’s lose-lose.
Still, Gingrich, his allies in the GOP leadership, and other Republicans are furious at the nine. They’ve talked about punishment. Representative Bob Barr of Georgia says he may seek formal disciplining, though that seems unlikely any time soon. The greatest anger is directed at the four Republicans who voted for another person for speaker (the five others voted ” present”). “They essentially put a gun to the king’s head and pulled the trigger, but the king lived,” says a member of the GOP leadership. “That’s the ultimate crime.” Gingrich has told associates he blames representative Michael Forbes of New York especially for being the first to declare he’d vote against Gingrich. That broke the ice, allowing further defections. Forbes voted for Leach for speaker.
Representative Linda Smith of Washington is blamed for grandstanding. House GOP whip Tom DeLay believes he had her promise to inform him first of how she would vote, but instead she announced her decision on TV. “She calls herself a reformer and she voted for a Washington lobbyist for speaker,” huffed a GOP leader. (She voted for Bob Walker, a recently retired House member, now president of the Wexler Group.) Representative Tom Campbell, who voted for Leach, is faulted by the Gingrich forces for ingratitude, since they pumped $ 2 million into his House race in a special election in 1995. There’s less animosity toward Leach because he’s never been a reliable Republican vote. ” Leach is Leach,” says a Republican leader.
Yet the worst that’s likely to happen to any of them now — or to the other five — is mild ostracism. Months or years down the road, they may fail to get prized committee assignments or be included in key decisions. They can all live with that, the upside from their disloyalty being so great. Representative Mark Neumann of Wisconsin, who acceded to Gingrich’s pleas by voting “present” rather than for a different speaker, wants to run against Democratic senator Russ Feingold in 1998. Neumann’s vote on Gingrich may have been principled — he’s fanatical about opposing Washington corruption-but it’s politically helpful nonetheless. Forbes may face a primary challenge for his Long Island seat in 1998, but at least he got his hometown newspaper, the bitterly anti-Gingrich Newsday, off his back. As for Campbell, Republican leaders believe they extracted a promise from him in 1995 to stay in the House, but now they fear he’ll seek a Senate seat next year. He’ll probably win, and then be in a position to vote against Trent Lott for Senate majority leader in 1999.
Executive Editor Fred Barnes is a regular host of “Fox on Politics” on the Fox News Channel.
