WHEN HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERS met on September 6, giddiness reigned. House members had not been brutalized at town meetings during the August recess, as some had feared, over GOP plans to save $ 270 billion in Medicare spending (and thus balance the budget in seven years). The town meetings held by most House Republicans had gone swimmingly, with few protests over Medicare. Declared House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “By the end of August, it is fair to say that on the core questions — does Medicare need to be saved and do you want to see somebody do something about Medicare? — we had won.”

In the Senate, Republicans aren’t so sure. Before the recess, even conservative senators like Trent Lott of Mississippi, the GOP whip, and Spencer Abraham of Michigan, the most influential of the Republican freshmen, were privately proposing to trim the $ 270 billion target, make a deal with President Clinton, and take Medicare off the table as a hot political issue. Now, they are less squeamish. Abraham was scarcely asked about Medicare at all while in Michigan. But others remain anxious, especially Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. And Majority Leader Bob Dole is ambivalent. In his September 5 speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Dole promised “this will not be an autumn of compromise,” then contradicted himself by asking Clinton “for the good of the country [to] agree to take Medicare out of the realm of politics.” Sounds like pre-emptive surrender, said Rep. John Linder of Georgia, a Gingrich confidant. Dole insisted it wasn’t.