HALEY BARBOUR, RIVERBOAT GAMBLER

It’s too early, the Mississippian replied.

A few months later, when the AFL-CIO pummeled Illinois Republican congressman Ray LaHood with similar ads, he beseeched the RNC chairman for air cover. “We’re getting Harry and Louise’d,” LaHood cried, referring to the ads generated by the Health Insurance Association of America that helped sink President Clinton’s health care package.

It’s still too early, Barbour said.

Finally, a few weeks later, when a barrage of negative ads attacked GOP freshman Steve Chabot for raising congressional salaries in the 103rd Congress — when Chabot hadn’t even been elected yet — he couldn’t take it. Standing at the House Republican Conference, Chabot yelled, “When are we going to get our message out?”

Eight months later, Republicans are still asking that question.

It’s one of this season’s greatest political gambles: In the age of rapid- response politics, Barbour is doing the unthinkable — lying in wait. As Democrats batter his foot soldiers, Barbour’s organization is quietly stockpiling millions of dollars for an 11th-hour offensive. RNC officials estimate — with only minimal exaggeration — that Democrats and their interest groups will outspend the national committee by as much as $ 90 million before the August conventions, when the GOP plans its full-scale assault. “We’re like Mel Gibson in Braveheart,” says one RNC aide. “We keep telling our troops to ‘hold, hold, hold.’ But it isn’t easy. The troops are getting restless.”

Indeed they are. Following nine months of unmitigated assaults from Democrats and the unions, the 73 House Republicans who spearheaded the revolution are scurrying in panic. The GOP presidential nominee, Bob Dole, is plummeting in the polls. And for perhaps the first time since taking over the RNC in 1993, the man whom Rep. Bill Paxon once hailed as “godlike” is facing hostility within his own camp. “We made a decision a long time ago not to spend dollar for dollar with labor,” Barbour says of his latest gambit. ” Unlike the unions, we don’t have a bottomless well of compulsory dues. I know no members like to be attacked by name in their districts. . . . I know it’s frustrating for them.”

Frustrating?

“We feel like we’re the troops getting killed out on the fields while the lords are sitting safely in the hills,” snaps Oklahoma freshman Steve Largent.

“Where’s the RNC cavalry?” demands Ney.

“They were just too slow to recognize the damage being done,” complains Pennsylvania representative Phil English.

“If we’re supposed to be the party of the rich, then why do they seem to have all the money?” cries Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana.

“It was a strategic blunder,” says Washington Rep. Jennifer Dunn.

“At some point you got to say,” asserts Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, “if you have the weapons, load ’em and fire.”

And that’s just Republicans. Democrats are downright giddy. “I can see the ads playing on TV when I go door to door,” crows Chabot’s Democratic opponent, Mark Longabaugh. “The RNC is making a wonderful mistake,” gloats Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. And Don Sweitzer, former DNC political director, gleefully posits: “If Bob Dole goes down and Democrats regain the House, then the once-great Haley Barbour will be remembered as a failed chairman.”

Nineteen ninety-six wasn’t supposed to be this way. This was the year King Barbour was to acquire his crown jewel — the first GOP president and Congress in four decades — and retire happily to his home in Yazoo City, Mississippi. (Or perhaps to a nice cabinet post, like the late Ron Brown after the Clinton victory in 1992.) If there was anyone who seemed untouchable after 1994, it was the kid who once organized the back roads of Mississippi for Richard Nixon.

As RNC chairman, Barbour helped orchestrate the greatest Republican revival in America since the 1920s. Without a single Republican incumbent losing, and with a net gain of 59 Republican House members, 10 GOP senators, and 14 governorships, he drove his beleaguered Democratic counterpart, David Wilhelm, into exile.

While Gingrich touted the Third Wave, Barbour actually created a message machine, complete with a $ 2 million television studio. He established the RNC’s own propaganda tank, the National Policy Forum, that steadily spread Republican ideas from Sacramento to Syracuse. And with his booming voice, bouffant hair, and salesman’s smile, Barbour preached the GOP gospel in his now famous folksy soundbites:

Democrats are running like scalded dawgs.

The GOP’s as strawng as an acre of garlic.

And on election night: Boy, we’re in high cotton now.

More valuable than his homespun spin, each of his ten stubby fingers seemed to possess its own Midas touch: He raised a record $ 65.8 million in 1994 and helped rescue the National Republican Congressional Committee from a staggering debt. Ironically, the man now under fire from Hill Republicans for hoarding GOP money shelled out more on a midterm election than anyone in RNC history. In a less talked-about gamble, Barbour even borrowed $ 5 million in the final months of the 1994 campaign to restock Republican war chests.

After the election, Paxon, the jubilant chairman of the NRCC, raved to the National Journal: “It isn’t too much to say that he is, next to Newt Gingrich, the guy that we think is most responsible for us winning our majority.” The Economist put it more succinctly: “Saint Haley.”

Saint Haley. Now that’s a cross to bear. And if Dole’s weak campaign and the worrisome decline in public support for congressional Republicans do not improve, poor Barbour may soon find himself hanged upon it.

But like William Wallace, the Scottish hero played by Gibson in the epic movie Braveheart, Barbour hopes to keep Democratic spears just far enough from Republican hearts until the eleventh hour, when, allies say, he will unload his ammunition.

“This is his clear strategy,” says Don Fierce, the RNC’s director of strategic planning from 1993 to 1995. “Haley knew that simply throwing $ 5 million to make House members feel good wouldn’t have changed public opinion.” He then adds: “The real air battle will be waged from Labor Day on.”

It may not be pretty. In the first six months of this year, the RNC raked in nearly $ 42 million in hard money — roughly $ 10 million more than the DNC — as well as $ 35 million in soft money. And in July alone it pulled in a total of $ 23 million, nearly double its previous monthly record.

While conserving most of this money, Barbour is quick to drawl that he has not left Republicans on the Hill totally unprotected. In May, he notes, the RNC launched a $ 20 million ad campaign that will run until the August conventions. Although most of that money went to bolster a bankrupt Dole campaign, other reinforcements are on the way. After months of inertia, a coalition of businesses unveiled a $ 1.3 million ad campaign to counter the AFL-CIO blitz. And on July 23 the NRCC undertook a $ 10 million TV and radio campaign that will air in at least 30 congressional districts.

But for House freshmen, the engines of the revolution, the damage may have already been done. “Quite frankly,” says GOP pollster Frank Luntz, “we didn’t respond. The feeling at the top was that voting decisions are made in the last 10 days. They may still be proven right, but I’m afraid we’ve lost some swing voters whose minds are made up.”

And for Barbour’s critics, the question remains: Where was the famed RNC cavalry nine months ago when the GOP was trying to balance the budget and Clinton was successfully, and perhaps irrevocably, tarring Republicans as extremists?

“You name it,” says LaHood, “the RNC had excuses.”

Bob Dole was one of them. After the costly GOP primary, Dole desperately needed a cash transfusion. Not surprisingly, the three-time presidential candidate turned to Barbour, who, like himself, had gambled his place in history on winning it all in 1996.

Barbour had guarded his war chest for just such a scenario. He quickly unleashed his $ 20 million worth of “issue” ads touting Dole, many doing double-duty in vulnerable House members’ districts. But as Dole struggled on, some Republicans complained that Barbour was devoting too many resources to the top of the ticket. “He has completely forgotten about the real revolution, ” complains one hardcore freshman. “He keeps pouring Republican money into a sinking ship, while the rest of us go down with it.”

Indeed, RNC aides calculate, if Dole, who is trailing Clinton by 20 points in some polls, loses by more than 7 percent, then Republicans could forfeit more houses than just the white one. A blowout in California, Washington, and Oregon alone could decapitate more than 20 House Republicans, nearly enough to create the once unthinkable: Speaker Gephardt.

His neck sharing the same noose as Dole’s, the telegenic Barbour finds his fate intertwined with one of the most inarticulate campaigners in history. Nevertheless, the tight-lipped Kansan and easy-talking Mississippian have publicly embraced one another. Dole, who headed the Republican National Committee under President Nixon, hails Barbour as the greatest RNC chairman in history. And Barbour hails Dole, almost wistfully, as the next president of the United States.

The courtship, however, has not always been so sweet. Dole initially wanted Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, not Barbour, to run the RNC in 1993. And despite Barbour’s urging, Dole refused to sign the Contract with America, leaving the revolution to founder in the Senate.

Things sank to their nadir in December 1995 when then-Majority Leader Dole, on the advice of his chief of staff, Sheila Burke, booted Barbour from legislative strategy sessions. Normally unflappable, Barbour reportedly exploded in anger. “Everything pretty much went to hell after that,” says one top House aide. “Nobody else in the room had Haley’s political instincts.”

What prompted the scuffle? “Dole was suspicious of someone who wasn’t even a senator sitting in on legislative meetings,” explains one Senate leadership aide. “He had never seen a party chairman in that capacity.”

Perhaps that is because Nixon had snubbed Dole as RNC chairman at almost every turn. And so, at the most critical juncture of the Republican revolution, Barbour found himself sulking on the sidelines. Since then, aides say, the two have cooperated more closely, the stoic septuagenarian reaching out to a suddenly more patient Barbour.

One reason is Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager and Barbour’s former chief deputy. Reed speaks almost daily to Barbour, sharing strategy and tactics. Dole and Barbour also now confer weekly. The result: When Dole decided to retire from the Senate after more than 30 years in Congress, one of five people in whom he confided was Barbour.

But pinning your dreams on Bob Dole isn’t easy. Despite Barbour’s coaching, Dole, in a span of four weeks, picked a fight with NBC’s Katie Couric, compared smoking tobacco to drinking milk, insulted the head of the powerful Family Research Council, refused to read from a TelePrompTer, and changed his position three times on the abortion plank. “It certainly wasn’t our idea to make guns, abortion, and tobacco the three pillars of our campaign,” says Fierce. “That’s got the freshmen spooked to high heaven, and I don’t blame them. We should be talking about crime, welfare, and taxes.”

Even since boycotting impromptu chats with the press, Dole remains behind. And things look as stark to some Republicans as they did during the government shutdown. “I’m not aware of a coherent coordinated strategy between the RNC, the NRCC, and the Dole campaign,” says Largent. “There’s been one blunder after another. Right now it’s every man for himself.”

Like most strategies, Barbour’s is derived from the last successful war. In 1994, Republicans trounced Democrats, at least in part, by hoarding their money until the final weeks of the campaign. According to one GOP poll, more than 50 percent of the voters made up their minds during October.

But is 1994 the same as 19967 Probably not. First, labor is shelling out an unprecedented $ 35 million. Second, the new Republican Congress has mobilized the once-moribund Democratic base. Third, Republicans, against Barbour’s initial advice, tried to curb the growth in Medicare spending. “Republicans touched the third rail and got electrocuted,” says Democratic consultant Mark Mellman.

Finally, there is Barbour’s newest nemesis, Dick Morris. Clinton’s sometime Democratic, sometime Republican strategist is gambling that he can annihilate Republicans with an early deluge of ads. According to Bob Woodward’s book, The Choice, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore campaign shelled out more than $ 18 million on pro-Clinton ads — a figure some GOP media trackers actually estimate as high as $ 43 million. “He’s from the bowels of hell,” says Souder, who worked with Morris as an aide to Sen. Dan Coats. “He’s also a genius.”

Despite such odds, plenty of veteran Republicans, including Speaker Newt Gingrich, are betting on Barbour. After all, most of the RNC’s critics are political novices — Largent caught footballs for a career — whom Barbour helped elect. “A lot of this is just scapegoating,” says Dan Stanley, Dole’s former administrative assistant. And as GOP consultant Eddie Mahe notes, “If [Barbour] ran out of money on October 15, the growling would be far more intense than it is now.”

In fact, congressional Republicans are no further behind in the polls then they were at this point in 1994. Incumbent Republicans also have far larger war chests. Rep. John Ensign, who is under siege from Democratic interest groups in Nevada, has $ 841,000 cash on hand — more than seven times that of his expected opponent.

And despite his lead, Clinton remains vulnerable; according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, 63 percent of Americans doubt his honesty. “I’m happy where we’re at right now,” Barbour proclaims. “Republicans are likely to gain 10 seats in the House . . . and make small gains in the Senate.” Indeed, the Yazoo kid may still have his crown jewel — and rank as the the greatest RNC chairman in history.

Of course, there is another possibility: Like William Wallace, Barbour may be politically disemboweled.

David Grann is executive editor of The Hill.